Monks of Tallinn

I CAME across them all of a sudden the other night after climbing the steep, cobbled street from the old part of town and turning through an ancient stone gateway at the top of the escarpment. Tallinn's giant, faceless monks.
    They have no eyes or facial features but, even so, seem to stare at you through the cold, dark night as they silently keep watch over the ramparts of the old walls, like some menacing alien statues in an episode of Dr Who.
    The sculptures of the monks in Tallinn's Danish King’s Garden allude to the stories and legends associated with this historically significant yard and liven up the area for both the residents and visitors alike.
    At night the three 2.5 metre bronze statues - Ambrosius, the Expectant monk, Bartholomeus, the Praying monk, and Claudius, the Watchful Monk, cast an eery presence over the Danish King’s Garden where they stand.
    Since the end of the 18th century, when the towers surrounding this garden area began to be converted for the use as living quarters, many strange stories have emerged allowing the area to lay claim to be the most haunted place in old Tallinn.

   Among the most popular was the ghost of a monk, or even several monks at a time. Usually, the monk appears as a giant figure of light and other times as a provider of admonishing or inspiring messages. The most recent sighting is claimed to have been in the mid-1980s when the Polish workers were restoring one of the the medieval towers.
    It is not even the end of November but here in the northern Baltic state capital of Estonia, the leaves have long since disappeared. The skeleton trees form tormented silhouettes against the cold, grey sky - a stark winter nakedness, just like the people in enjoying the heat and steam of the hotel sauna back down the road.
    Estonia lies on the edge of the Eurasian land mass. A tiny country with a population of just 1.3 million, spread out over a natural and largely unspoilt Baltic landscape. Having only been independent from the former Soviet Republic since 1991, it is also a very young country.   
    Before that it was an impoverished Soviet bloc republic fronting the chilly Baltic Sea. When you gaze out from the parapet encircling the attractive old town, the Soviet era brutalist-style concrete block towers perch awkwardly in the vista. They still provide many of Estonia’s citizens with utilitarian apartment living.
    There is a distinct sense of place here. Beautiful architecture abounds in the medieval town, in contrast to the austere grey tenements and blocks of flats further out. But everywhere is neat and not a speck of dropped litter anywhere.
    Someone tells me that it is all very different in the summer when the long hours of daylight transform the capital Tallinn, and I can only imagine what it might be like. Not as now when the light on an overcast day rarely gets above the dim setting.
    From the hotel there was a short climb towards the old city walls. Turn left at the top and you enter a jumble of cobbled streets, flanked by the impressive parliament building to my left and the towering  orthodox cathedral opposite.
    Outside of the parliament building was a large group of young children, probably aged around ten years old and obviously mounting a small protest of some kind. They were happy to talk in almost perfect English and told me theywere adding their voice to the climate “emergency”, inspired by the teenage Greta Thunberg. A very modern sign of the times set poignantly amongst the architecture of the past.
    The cathedral itself, built to a design by Mikhail Preobrazhensky of St Peterburg, reflects the typical Russian revival style of the late 1800s, during which modern-day Estonia was part of the Russian Empire.

   The wind was bitterly cold as I trudged the steep flight of steps towards the imposing main entrance of this architectural masterpiece. It was the date anniversary of my father’s sudden passing three years before and inside I purchased a candle for a euro from a polite old lady at the desk to light in his memory amongst the other flickering flames of prayer and remembrance.
    The old part of the city on the top of the hill was a cris-cross of lanes and beautifully styled old buildings. I headed past another immense church and down a narrower cobbled street towards some lights.
    It was three pm in the afternoon and the short autumn daylight was already fading to dusk on a day which had been murky since breakfast time. Candles burning in lanterns framed the arched gateway to an old courtyard with a welcoming warmth. A stylish pot cat was tethered with a bight red leather lead to the bottom of the gatepost.
    Even with woollen gloves my hands were numb but inside the courtyard there was welcome shelter and respite from the cutting breeze. Small tables and chairs were arranged around the courtyard, each with their own candlelit lanterns, and a potter’s workshop lay to one side. No one was sitting outside today but at the far end was an inviting small doorway to a cosy-looking café. I ventured through the double doors, seeming much like a basic air lock designed to keep the heat in and the bitter cold out.
    Inside it was dim, the lighting soft with candles burning on each of the tables. The atmosphere made the coffee and local cheesecake taste especially good and I decided I quite liked Tallinn, even on such a cold and austere, early winter’s day.

Brexit's wretched betrayal

A SPEECH given yesterday by Sir John Major, the UK prime minister from 1990 to 1997, is one that every journalist, TV host and political pundit should be obliged to watch from beginning to end. And, for that matter, anyone else who is interested in the country's post-Brexit trajectory.

In a pre-recorded lecture at Middle Temple, London, he told viewers that Brexit may prove "even more brutal than expected" due to the UK's own negotiating "failures".

He stated that the UK's "inflexibility" and "threats" towards the EU would make future trade "less profitable". And he warned of the "corrosive" impact to the UK's reputation of a proposed new law giving ministers the power to over-ride aspects of the Brexit agreement.

It came on the same day that the House of Lords rejected parts of the government’s controversial Internal Market Bill. Peers removed a series of clauses which would give the UK the right to disregard obligations in the EU Withdrawal Agreement in relation to Northern Ireland, defeating the government twice by huge margins.

Sir John, an outspoken critic of the UK's exit from the EU, described the Bill as a “slippery slope down which no democratic government should ever travel" and he urged Parliament to resist measures which he said threatened essential liberties and could place ministers above the law.

"This action is unprecedented in all our history - and for good reason. It has damaged our reputation around the world," he said. "Lawyers everywhere are incredulous that the UK - often seen as the very cradle of the rule of law - could give themselves the power to break the law."

Sir John stated he was not optimistic about the prospects for trade talks between the UK and EU, which resumed in London on Monday, saying the UK was not being "frank" about the possible outcomes when the UK leaves the single market and customs union at the end of the post-Brexit transition period.

The government  has said it is hopeful of securing a comprehensive deal modelled on the EU's arrangement with Canada but Sir John said it was "disingenuous" of ministers to pretend they were not seeking far deeper commitments in key areas, such as energy and aviation.

He said he feared, as a result, the process would end up with either no deal or a "flimsy and bare-bones" agreement that created new trade barriers and would be a "wretched betrayal" of the promises made to British voters during the 2016 referendum.

"These costs and complexities are the certain legacy of Brexit," he stated. "This is as a result of our negotiating failure - and it is a failure.

"Because of our bombast, our blustering, our threats and our inflexibility - our trade will be less profitable, our Treasury poorer, our jobs fewer, and our future less prosperous.

“It now seems that on 1 January next year, Brexit may be even more brutal than anyone expected," he added.

 To listen to Sir John Major’s speech in full click here: ‘The State we Are In’

Under cover of Covid

DATES and events are beginning to converge for the UK like some perfect storm on a doomsday calendar. The end of the new national lockdown, being implemented across England from this Thursday (4 November), will nominally take us to within 30 days of the end of the EU transition period.

And if the lockdown has to be extended, either nationally or regionally, not only is it going to bump straight into Christmas but then swiftly follows 31 December, the day that the UK goes rogue from Europe.

It means the UK is likely to be in the midst of two major crisis at the same time, at least one of them wholly self-inflicted and still, potentially, postponable.

Twelve months ago who would have prophesied, or even dare imagine, that the country would be living simultaneously in the first and second episodes of some wild dystopian trilogy? 

That Britons would, throughout 2020, have had their civil liberties severely restricted, that pubs would be unable to serve a pint, and that people would be forbidden from visiting their families or loved ones.

At the same time the impending conflagration of the ending Brexit transition period does not seem to bother the current prime minister and his team, at least in public. Or is it that a government can, perhaps quite reasonably, only concentrate on one major thing at once?

More likely, its appointees and associates are all still hedging their Brexit hedge fund bets and, come January, whatever the Covid-state-of-the-nation, are looking forward to divvying out some lucrative financial rewards.

The Lighthouse Keeper has been viewing events and this unfortunate convergence of dates with increasing alarm and disdain for some time from a favourite cliff top perch on England’s North Norfolk coast.

It looks out over the grey North Sea and, on clear days, it almost seems possible to see the low-lying coast of the Netherlands, hardly sunlit uplands in a physical sense but nevertheless beginning to look quite enticing from this side of the Brexit divide.

Of course, whichever way you view it, the country is in something of a pandemic-driven economic crisis already and, by all accounts, preparations for leaving the EU are also seriously behind the curve, which means a bumpy ride for many come the New Year.

The fact that the Covid-19 crisis has also been handled in a somewhat lackadaisical and reactive way by the Johnson-led government hardly bodes well for the enormous, long-term complexities of post-EU Britain.

Only this morning, on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, Prof Andrew Hayward, a member of the government’s SAGE science advisory group, said: "We can't turn back the clock but if we had chosen a two-week circuit breaker in mid-September we would definitely have saved thousands of lives.

“And we would clearly have inflicted substantially less damage on our economy than the proposed four-week lock down will now do."

Ministers will say that there are other costs to lockdown that they were weighing up, which is very true and too often forgotten. But by making a late U-turn, it becomes much harder to make that point, as now those costs are being borne anyway, with none of the benefits of acting earlier.

Are we repeating the same inexcusable mistakes elsewhere and will we, come the start of January, be saying just the same about a botched and ill-planned Brexit departure?

If only we had used the time to prepare wisely. If only we could turn the clock back. If only we had strategic leadership with the country's best interests at heart.

Despite the government's current narrative, Brexit isn't really the story of getting a trade deal with the EU. It's the story of discarding one. And not just any old trade deal. The country is discarding single market and customs union membership, part of the most advanced trade deal anywhere on Earth.

To put the tricky situation in further context, I turn to the latest article by Prof Chris Grey and the conclusion of this blog is a precis of what he published on Friday (30 October) soon after returning from a half-term trip to Germany.

“Drive down any motorway today and you see the unavoidable message of the government’s increasingly panicky campaign - ‘time is running out’. Brexit is no longer mentioned, for we are not supposed to recall that what were to have been the ‘sunny uplands’ turn out to be a quagmire of paperwork, expense and inconvenience," he writes. 

"In Kent on the way to Dover there is more visible evidence of the future - huge construction works for  the giant lorry parks that will be needed post-transition.

None of the difficulties, as everyone should know by now, will be avoided by an EU-UK trade deal, although they will be worsened without a deal. The outcome remains opaque. 

Tony Connelly, a journalist for the Irish TV channel RTE, reports that one reason the outcome of negotiations remains unknowable is Johnson’s almost pathological aversion to making the necessary choices.

One suggestion is that he will await the outcome of this week’s US Presidential election before deciding which way to jump. It may be a plausible enough theory of Johnson’s decision-making process, if only because it is so inane.

Economically, of course, even the best US trade deal will not come close to compensating for the damage of there being no deal with the EU.

A tiny foretaste of just how dishonest the spin will become came in the government’s triumphant announcement that, as a result of a trade deal it has just signed with Japan, soy sauce will be cheaper from 1 January as it will attract a zero tariff.

Even that turned out to be a lie of a strange and complex sort. Soy sauce currently has no tariff charged anyway because of the EU-Japan trade deal which the UK is leaving, so the deal with Japan doesn’t make it cheaper it just stops it getting more expensive by virtue of trading on WTO terms."

Its all very nonsensical and misleading, just like the Alice in Wonderland politics the Lighthouse Keeper wrote about in Johnson’s land of fake believe back in 2019. 

Prof Grey goes on: "Moving from Brexiter PR back into the real world what we find are new reports of impending labour shortages once transition ends in fields ranging from agriculture to dentistry, of regulatory uncertainty in industries from aerospace to chemicals, and of ongoing difficulties in the recruitment of trained customs staff.

Many of these stories are, as they have been for years, under the public radar, appearing in the business pages of newspapers or in the specialist media of particular industries.

There is more public awareness when the Brexit effects on holiday-makers are reported, as with last weekend’s outrage at the ‘petty EU’ for ‘threatening’ British tourists with longer passport queues from next year.

It’s a story that encapsulates so much of the Brexiter mindset. That this was likely to be an effect of Brexit is not a new idea, but they dismissed it in the past as Project Fear. Then, when it threatens to become a reality, they treat it as a form of punishment as if, whilst leaving the EU, Britain ought to retain the rights it had as a member.

As the years have gone on, this mindset seems to have become so ingrained that there is no way of reasoning with it: all the adverse effects of Brexit are either denied (they won’t happen, it’s just scaremongering), ignored (they aren’t happening), displaced (they are happening but it’s not because of Brexit) or disowned (they shouldn’t happen, it’s only because the EU is punishing us).

Much that is familiar to everyday life in Britain is being ripped up by force majeure and few of us have alive today have experienced anything like it. But, still, Britain pushes on with the one, supposedly inviolable, immutable policy of Brexit.

It is a policy of such folly that the government no longer dares mention it by name and which even its most enthusiastic proponents have ceased to try to justify in any serious way. The Brexit Emperor lacks not just clothes now but skin and flesh too.

Yet even now – hugely difficult as it would be – it wouldn’t be totally impossible, given the extraordinary circumstances for the UK, to at least try to find some route to extending the transition,  rather than to just parrot that ‘time is running out’.

It seems feasible that, if the UK was open to such an idea, the EU would be at least willing to explore how to make it work, if only because of the worsening Covid-19 situation in many of its member states too.

The likelihood that this won’t happen, however, is down solely to the warthog stubbornness of a small group of fanatical Brexiters, still fighting the battle to leave that they have already won, and totally indifferent to its costs.

So, in Brexit trade terms we blunder on. Prisoners of a series of past decisions that we do not have the wit or the will to revisit, and of a small but powerful group of ideologues we are either too cowardly or too weak to face down. It is worse than folly. It is insanity.” 

The Lighthouse Keeper couldn’t agree more. 

To read Prof Chris Grey’s full post click here: “Beyond folly”.

Beam me up, Scotty!

A FAILED post-Bexit attempt to establish the groundwork for a British standalone equivalent to the US global positioning system (GPS) or Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system has cost taxpayers £64 million without succeeding in its aim.

Official figures released this week reveal the UK’s replacement navigation satellite programme lasted just 18 months and was finally closed down in September after ministers abandoned the attempt to create a go-it-alone British system.

I understand the UK Space Agency (UKSA), which is headquartered in Swindon, took out a six-year lease on premium offices in Victoria, central London, to accommodate staff working on the project.

Many UK space experts, as well as the main opposition party, accused government ministers of embarking on a “hare-brained scheme” which was almost certainly doomed to failure. Most space projects of any size or depth these days are part of an international cooperative effort.

In an attempt to justify the expenditure, the government says it “learned lessons” which would enable it to pursue “newer, more innovative ideas”, whatever that might mean.

The announcement follows a decision earlier this summer by business secretary Alok Sharma, who acted against warnings from senior civil servants when he authorised a £400 million government investment in the bankrupt satellite firm OneWeb.

It is widely believed the prime minister’s controversial special advisor Dominic Cummings was behind the bid, which came out of the blue and took many analysts by surprise.
                           
The multi-satellite constellation proposed by OneWeb, which has a manufacturing base in Florida, is designed to provide global internet services. The tiny satellites have no capability to provide navigation signals.

Since the purchase was confirmed, officials have refused to publish an estimate of how much the investment is likely to cost the public in the long run, although UKSA has admitted that more funding will be needed to keep the business alive.

Data released this week show that the total cost of the scrapped satellite navigation programme was £64.2 million, out of an original budget estimate of £90 million.

Labour’s shadow science minister Chi Onwurah said: “These U-turns and mistakes have cost many tens of millions of taxpayer money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

“The government’s recklessness and incompetence with something as vital for UK jobs and prosperity as the space sector is totally unacceptable, and even more so when ministers avoid scrutiny about the enormous cost attached.”

The British government continues to insist that the work which went into an independent satellite navigation system has not gone to waste because it will inform plans for a scheme using the private sector to build a new network of satellites.

In July 2019, Boris Johnson, speaking from Dowining Street in one of his first speech’s since on becoming prime minister, said: “Let’s get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and Earth observation systems – UK assets orbiting in space with all the long-term strategic and commercial benefits for this country.”

His pledge came after his predecessor Theresa May had made a failed attempt to keep Britain in Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation programme, which had already seen an investment of £1.2 billion of UK taxpayers’ money.

Announcing the launch of the UK Global Navigation Satellite System, seen at the time as a political manoeuvre to put pressure on Europe, May said: “This will ensure the UK’s safety post-Brexit, using the expertise of our world-leading space and security sectors to do so. Today’s investment marks an exciting time for the sector, and for the UK, and I can’t wait to see what we can achieve.”

But, like so many things associated with Brexit, the promises and false expectations bare no resemblance to the real world.

By the time the scheme was officially wound up last month, it had reached no definitive conclusions on how to move ahead and Britain seemed no closer to developing its own home-grown version of GPS.

In more government blatherskite, ministers are adamant that, combined with the investment in OneWeb, there is a realistic prospect of the UK “leading the way on satellite technology” in the future by using a decentralised approach which draws on the private sector as well as the state.

Basic navigation services from Europe’s Galileo, in which UK firms have played a major role to date, are available for all. But use of the encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS) is designed for government-authorised users – such as the military, fire brigades and the police – and is restricted to those inside the EU.

As part of its separation from Europe, the UK governments of both May and Johnson have refused, on largely ideological grounds, to countenance any kind of agreement that would give Britain full access to Galileo services.

Back in March 2018, in an article published in The New European newspaper, I predicted  that “stormy waters lay ahead for any organisation or business linked to Europe”.

“The knock-on effects of Brexit for one of the UK’s most buoyant and future-looking industries and the thousands of people it employs couldn’t be more profound,” I suggested.

In June this year, when I wrote about the UK government’s OneWeb bid, I declared it had all the hallmarks and parallels to the triumphant exceptionalism of the hugely expensive and, so far, still failed UK government plan during the Covid-19 crisis to go it alone and develop its own “world beating” Track & Trace App and system.

Four months later there is little evidence anywhere to dispel that point of view. We all know the Track & Trace system has cost a staggering £12 billion and yet, incredibly, is still not working efficiently enough to make a significant difference.

The lack of post-Brexit direction and strategy from the UK government is apparent almost everywhere you look today - including the country’s vibrant space industry. A government prone to blather and shooting from the hip is not a recipe for success in a business that relies more than most on international partnerships and long-term strategic vision.
 

Taking over the night sky

UNTIL relatively recently in human history the night sky remained one of the last unspoilt vestiges of our natural world. From the time of Galileo to the present day, astronomical observations from Earth’s surface have led to exceptional progress in the scientific understanding of the world around us.

Now, just as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century and a dynamic new phase in space exploration and exploitation begins, some of the current capability of astronomical instrumentation from the ground is potentially being endangered by the rapid development of micro-satellite fleets in low Earth orbits (LEO).

In the interests of preserving the ability to make meaningful visual and radio ground-based observations, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is sounding a clarion call for greater protection and international safeguards.

The IAU claims that if the deployment of mega constellations remains unchecked the view of the night sky will be increasingly impeded by artificial satellites, not only visible to the naked eye but also crossing and scarring professional and amateur time-lapse observations alike with parallel streaks at all latitudes.

SpaceX has already embarked on its ambitious Starlink project to populate the sky with some 42,000 satellites which, together with planned constellations such as those from OneWeb, Amazon and others, means there could one day be more than 50,000 small satellites encircling the Earth at different low altitudes.

These small, mass-produced satellites orbit very close to Earth with the intent to provide speedy internet connections via low-latency signals. But that proximity also makes them more visible and brighter in the night sky. 

Astronomers argue that such constellations will severely diminish our view of the universe, create more space debris and deprive humanity of an unblemished view of the night sky. If these networks come to fruition, they suggest that every square degree of the sky will eventually have a satellite crawling across it throughout the whole observing night.

As space becomes ever more commercialised the speed of such development is quickly overtaking the existing, globally agreed rules governing space activities. Mega-constellations are just one area where new rules of governance are urgently needed. Others include the exploitation of resources on the Moon and elsewhere, preserving peace and resolving disputes, and rules for everyday living in space.

Recognising the urgent need for coordinated action, the space nation Asgardia is organising a second congress in its ‘Paving the Road to Living in Space’ series. Taking place at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in 2021 (www.alc.space), it will focus on discussing key aspects of space law needed to ensure the success of future space exploits.

Of course, ROOM fully supports the growth and advancement of space technologies and the ensuing benefits they bring to everyday life, business and commerce across the globe.

But it would be ironic indeed if, by exploiting LEO without due responsibility, we neglect to consider the resultant damage to scientific research and a previously unblemished part of our natural environment that deployment of such new technologies could unwittingly deliver.

The urgent question is, do we continue to rush headlong into deploying massive new orbital networks without checks and balances, and with scant regard for the heavens above - or can the global space community approach this kind of thing in a more mature and responsible manner that is fair to everyone?

This editorial by Clive Simpson was first published in the Summer 2020 issue of ROOM Space Journal

 

Time to bee friendly

IT’S amazing how much wildlife three average-sized planters on your back yard patio can deliver.

I’ve always had a soft spot for lavender; its scent is heavenly and the sight of a lavender bush in full bloom and smothered with bees is surely one to gladden the heart.

But this year I wanted to try insect-friendly thyme in one of its many guises and marjoram, the latter an aromatic herb in the mint family.

Both have proved a huge success and, as we trug through the sunny days of August, the marjoram has finally come into its own.

It is spilling over the pots in profusion and attracting all kinds of pollinating insects, including a variety of different bees and butterflies.

This morning it was rewarding to sit in the early morning sun and watch the constant stream of delicately winged visitors to these delicious flowers.

I’ve grouped a couple of the marjoram pots together along with a small pot of strawberry scented mint, with its delicate spikes of lilac-coloured flowers, which the insects equally love.

The thyme plant was at its best a few weeks before so, after its tiny flowers had finally spent themselves, I trimmed it all right back, hoping maybe for a second burst early in the autumn.

Indeed, it is already sprouting lots of new growth and looks like it will flower a second time, though probably not as profusely as its initial display.

The planters themselves have required minimal preparation and looking after, apart from a regular water on hot days and the occasional drop of liquid plant feed.

I started out with just one small plant in each pot but reckon by next spring they can all be split to at least double my tally for next year.

Johnson's satellite gamble

SHOULD the UK government be spending hundreds of millions of pounds on the part-purchase of bankrupt US satellite firm OneWeb, which it hopes to lever as a replacement for departing the EU’s Galileo system as a result of Brexit?

OneWeb, which has already had around $3 billion of investment from SoftBank, is the kind of high risk space company that has to spend vast amounts of money before being able to make any income and in an entirely new field against stiff competition.

Cash flow is a fact of life for such companies where potential returns are many years down the line. This spring OneWeb’s on-going problems, combined with the arrival of Covid-19, created a perfect storm and it was forced it to file for bankruptcy in the United States.

Since then it has been desperately hunting for a buyer with, among other groups from France and China, rival Amazon thought to have expressed interest. Intense lobbying by its officials is understood to have included the British government and its advisers.

So the UK government's plan is to invest £500 million to help rescue OneWeb as part of a wider private-sector consortium bid that would potentially see the British public holding a 20 percent stake in the company.

Under such a deal the UK would likely need OneWeb to transfer its manufacturing base from the United States to Britain. And, crucially, it would also be required to add an innovative new global positioning technology (possibly developed by the UK's 'Satellite Applications Catapult' to each of the thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

The government believes this would be cheaper than investing around £4 billion, as previously mooted, in developing a rival satellite navigation system to the EU's Galileo.

It should be emphasised that the UK is only unable to access the restricted, military secure areas of the EU’s Galileo satellites and this is not because of Brexit (Norway has full operational access under its Co-operation Agreement) but because the UK government has chosen not to withdraw cooperation on Galileo for ideological political reasons. The OneWeb bid is therefore couched in politics

To date all major global positioning systems – America’s GPS, Russia’s Glonass, China’s BeiDou, and Europe’s Galileo (an EU-led project that the UK helped design and build) is in a medium Earth orbit at a height of approximately 20,000 km. OneWeb’s satellites, 74 of which have already been launched, are in a low Earth orbit, just 1,200 km high.

OneWeb is working on basically the same idea as Elon Musk’s Starlink - a mega-constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, which are used to connect people on the ground to the internet.

According to Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester, replacing GPS for military-grade GPS systems (which need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres) is not necessarily possible on small LEO satellites like those developed by OneWeb.

He suggests that rather than being selected for the technical quality of the offering, the investment is more in line with “a nationalist agenda”.

One might argue the scheme has all the hallmarks and parallels to the triumphant exceptionalism of the hugely expensive and so far failed UK government plan during the Covid-19 crisis to go it alone and develop its own Track & Trace App, despite other technologies already existing.

The internet side of a fully developed OneWeb satellite system may also have other more dubious attractions to Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief advisor and chief of the Vote Leave campaign - the potential for surreptitious data harvesting.
                      
Given that OneWeb has arrived at its current destination by spending a very large pile of money already on its core mission, and more will be needed to make it viable, there are still very sizeable financial risks for a public investment.

OneWeb remains an unproven business and is competing against established giants, such as SpaceX, which is about to launch its latest batch of Starlink satellites. Significant technical issues will need to be overcome too, all of which will cost a lot more money.

And, of course, such satellite mega-constellations are already attracting the wrath of astronomers for their potential to hamper astronomical observations (see Traffic lights in the night sky), as well as making an as yet undetermined contribution to the growing problem of orbital debris.

Boris Johnson’s potential participation in a OneWeb bid has been the focus of both  opposition and support from the UK space industry, which had originally pinned its hopes on pursuing a lucrative Galileo-style navigation project.

One deciding factor appears to have been support from US defence officials who do not want the UK to develop a replica of the American GPS or European Galileo systems. In contrast a LEO navigation service would complement the current US system and, according to some, offer extra resilience to US allies.

Certainly, as Brexit and all its down the line ramifications gradually unfold, the government’s latest bid signals a further departure from its previous close and highly successful associations with Europe towards a potentially much more unbalanced and risky trans-Atlantic partnership.

Clive Simpson is a freelance journalist specialising in global space affairs.