Inform your opinion: Why do we need a space minister?
Final frontier: Kiwis may know about Rocket Lab but less well-known is the cluster of companies that have emerged in aerospace and space tech in this country in recent years. Photo / Getty Images
There were bemused chuckles emanating from the press gallery when the new coalition government announced Judith Collins as the country’s first-ever Minister for Space.
Space is one of several interrelated portfolios the veteran National MP has been laden with (defence, GCSB, NZSIS, science, innovation and technology, and digitising government being the other ones). In addition, Collins is also serving as the country’s 34th attorney-general and Lead Co-ordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques.
It’s a daunting workload. Amidst dealing with litigation involving the government, national security issues and a looming revamp of our research sector, there may not be much space on Collins’ agenda for, well, space.
But National signalled the creation of the portfolio in the release of its space policy a few weeks out from the election. Its reasoning for elevating the status of this developing area of the economy was sound.
Space tech is one of the fastest-growing high-tech industries in the world, as constellations of small satellites are launching to provide broadband services and remote sensing capabilities to monitor the planet. Global management consulting firm McKinsey estimates it will be close to becoming a US$1 trillion business by 2030. In 2019, the space sector was estimated to directly contribute around $900 million to New Zealand’s economy and support around 5000 jobs, according to businessman Kevin Jenkins, previously a founding board member at Aerospace Auckland. He adds at its current growth rate, it will double in size by the end of the decade.
Kiwis may know about Rocket Lab, one of the only companies other than Elon Musk’s SpaceX that is launching small satellites into space on a regular basis. But less well known is the cluster of companies that have emerged in aerospace and space tech in this country in recent years.
They include Christchurch start-up Dawn Aerospace, which is developing and testing the Aurora uncrewed suborbital space plane with the aim of delivering satellites into low Earth orbit, before landing the plane back on a runway, creating a taxi service to space in the process.
In early December, Auckland company Zenno Astronautics deployed its superconducting electromagnet technology into orbit from a SpaceX rocket. Zenno has come up with an innovative way to position satellites using a magnetic field rather than fuel. Its trial of the technology in space could prove the case for a new way of designing satellites.
Space tech, and associated innovation in the aerospace sector in New Zealand, represents an area of economic opportunity, skills development and pioneering innovation that epitomises the late, great scientist Sir Paul Callaghan’s plea for New Zealand to “get off the grass” and embrace science and tech-driven industries.
As with Wellywood and our world-leading America’s Cup yacht designs, we never set out to be a world leader in space tech. Former economic development minister Steven Joyce recounts in his recently published autobiography, On the Record that he and government officials had to scramble in 2015 to create the legislation to allow Rocket Lab, now a US-owned company listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, to start launching rockets from the Māhia Peninsula.