The Satellite Business
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The government wants to boost the UK's growing space industry through its £400 m investment in satellite communications firm OneWeb. The company is a pioneer, launching satellites in Low Earth Orbit with the aim of providing broadband to under-served areas of the globe. But there are rivals, Elon Musk's Starlink Constellation being the best known. So is the UK investment in OneWeb a moonshot moment? Evan Davis and guests boldly go into discussion over what happens when you combine cutting-edge technology with uncertain business outcomes - and whether the state should be involved
Guests:
Professor Marek Ziebart, UCL Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb and Carissa Christensen, CEO, Bryce Space and Technology Producer: Lesley McAlpine
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to the program. |
| 0:07.2 | Now, how does this make you feel? |
| 0:09.0 | Prossol contact of up-jom. |
| 0:11.2 | Divigel central and back-blocs, |
| 0:13.1 | we've reached on the regime of the main stupon. |
| 0:16.9 | 10 seconds. |
| 0:17.9 | Paramed of system of the rocket and nositle of norm. |
| 0:26.3 | December last year, a little piece of Britain in some corner of a foreign field in eastern Russia. |
| 0:36.1 | What you have there is a commentator describing the launch of a Sawyer's rocket carrying 36 satellites in which we British taxpayers have a stake. |
| 0:38.4 | Ten seconds and all those functions normally, |
| 0:45.2 | the man says, as the rocket leaves Vostokny Cosmodrome. Now, those satellites belong to a company called OneWeb. But how did we all come to have a stake in this? It is a weird and truly unusual |
| 0:52.2 | piece of British industrial policy. In essence, the government |
| 0:56.0 | picked up almost half the company after it went bust last year. We paid £400 million for our share |
| 1:02.8 | and an Indian billionaire did the rest. Now, buying into OneWeb was seeing as buying new options |
| 1:09.6 | in having a presence in space. So it offers us a great |
| 1:14.2 | chance to take stock of what the hopes and dreams are of OneWeb and of Britain's space sector |
| 1:19.9 | more generally. We own the company and we will hear from them. But before we do, I want us to head |
| 1:25.8 | out into orbit and get some background on this |
| 1:28.1 | sector with two experts who will help us navigate through it all. And so, first of all, let me |
| 1:34.1 | introduce Maric Zibart, Professor of Space Geodicy at University College London. We talk about |
| 1:39.2 | a satellite industry and I think a lot of people just imagine them whirring around out there in |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.