Location - UK

Since this is the forum for discussing starting a company (which appears to have been extended to Amateur orbital spaceflight group ), I thought I'd compile a list of those who live in the UK who might/would be interested. At the moment I know of only about 4-5 space advocates who live in the UK - one of whom lives a few miles away from me in a neighbouring county.

So, who lives in the Sceptred Isles?

I live in the UK! Cambridgeshire to be a bit more specific. Not sure I'm too interested in starting a company though...not enough time as it is!

Always interested in this stuff though.

I've got a small flat in Chelsea which I use when I'm at work - does that count?

Don't have time to do anything else than my day job either, unfortunately.

Only just found this forum - I usually trawl through another. When I saw this thread I initially thought 'Great!' - then I saw the posting date...and the low number of replies Still, maybe it's worth giving this a bump by saying yes, I'm also in the UK and interested in getting a UK space company going - plenty of ideas, just no finance to do so Anyway, if anyone is still interested then who knows? Wouldn't it be amazing to see a UK SpaceX-style business get going - god knows it's about time we did something to try and get back in the game after throwing it all away in the 70's

Id quite happily give up some weekends to help someone launch their rockets or do anything fun. I know Starchaser worked from Dartmoor down my way for a bit, always an option if someone is driving through.

Name: Rob
Enthusiasm 10
Experience:0
Expertise: 0
Money:0

haha

Ok - so maybe we should bounce some ideas around about what would be required in order to start something perhaps? And by that I mean, what level of funding would realistically be needed, where to set up, what to do etc? I'll start the ball rolling since I can actually post now

Funding: To me this is dependent on what you plan to do I guess, so maybe that should be properly addressed later - but as a ballpark I would guess 10's of thousands running into 100's of thousands to really get a good start? Or is that over/under estimating?

Where: Well there are already facilities/office spaces that can be leased around Harwell and Guildford (Surrey Space Center), and you'd be in the thick of other space related businesses by taking up offices there. That or Culham perhaps are the main ones that spring to mind - all down South I admit, but then I'm based in Hampshire/Surrey anyway, so for me at least it makes sense

What: Now this is the real toughie. To my mind you can do one of two things - one, find a niche and exploit it, but if so then what niche and would it be profitable enough? And two, take the open approach and decide that you're going to try and cover the whole shooting match e.g. launchers, satellites, services, consultation etc etc.

To my mind covering all the bases means you stand a better chance of finding a profitable gap, and you're also in the position where you're not reliant on any external company/companies for sourcing essential items related to your products. As an example, I seem to remember hearing that originally Elon and SpaceX were going to outsource a lot of the work for making parts etc for their projects and then put them together in house, but due to being unable to get acceptable prices and delivery schedules they decided to just hire some talent to enable them to do the work in-house.

Anyway - that's the ball rolling, anyone else any thoughts?

Be good if there was a google map thing setup with anyone interested in helping space projects, a pin with a name and contact info perhaps skills too. Shame funding kills most things, Starchaser and Bristol Space Planes had better starts than most but money speaks volumes.

Interestingly enough has anyone got a list of UK companies already in the market or trying to get in?

I guess we have:

Starchaser
Bristol Space Planes
Reaction Engines
Virgin Galactic?
Spacefleet project
Cambridge Uni spaceflight