Interviewer: Gurbir Singh (GS)

Interviewee: David Southwood (DS)

 

GS: David Southwood, Director of the European Space Agency. Welcome to the UK Space Conference.

 

DS: Hello. Welcome – it’s very nice to be here.

 

GS: As the Director of the European Space Agency, is it a tough job?

 

DS: You lose a lot of sleep. It has real ups and its real downs. But I think the ups are much more prevalent than downs. I mean, when you make a mistake it involves millions, so inevitably you sweat a lot.

 

GS: But it’s a fascinating period in history to be doing the job that you’re doing.

 

DS: At this particular time, yes. I mean, it’s a great 50 years. The 50 years of space that we’ve had. I was very young at the beginning of the space age and I never dreamt I would, if you like, even feel I played a minor role in it. I’ve been very very lucky and it’s been a terrific time because although I probably at some point in my career expected us to have colonies on at least the Moon by now, in other respects space has changed things absolutely beyond my expectation or comprehension. I mean, I drove here today using satellite navigation. That would have been magic to be able to just key in and be told at each turning on the road which way to go. That’s from space and I can tell you in 1957 that was magic. It was witch craft!

 

GS: Many of the familiar projects that you’ve been associated with, mainly Cassini-Huygens, is something that’s been a fantastic success. Why don’t we have more projects over that short a time scale? At the moment, we have to work years and decades.

 

DS: People like politics - and politics means you have to spend a lot of time getting anything started. Moreover, we don’t have a large enough budget to just think we’ll do this and this and this. We have to this – then this – then this. Things have to come in series, not in parallel and that’s a budgetary issue. But also I think politics plays an enormous amount of… we’re human and we like to argue with each other and we like to all try and take advantage of each other. So the political process of getting something going is as long as the implementation process. Cassini-Huygens, you mentioned it - I started really involved in it in ‘80 – ‘82 and the launch was in ‘97. So that’s 15 years and it’s not been up there 15 years. It’s not been on Saturn for 15 years yet. It’s been on Saturn for 4 years.

 

GS: And that is a wonderful success story. Private investment, is that something that the European Space Agency can take advantage of?

 

DS: Well it is in some regards. In the telecom area, we’re certainly taking advantage of private investment. You have to make sure that public money isn’t being unduly exploited. I mean, we’re civil servants just like everybody else. But of course in areas where we’re close to market, you probably should say that an entrepreneur should be asked to step up to the mark if they’re really capable of taking a technology development we’ve done and then they can turn it into something that’s exploitable for them but also for the people who use the service they provide.

 

GS: But your experience of private investment associated with Beagle wasn’t all that positive.

 

BS: I think that was pretty negative. I mean listen, Colin Pillinger, I have the highest admiration for, and I wouldn’t say a word against him doing something that was close to impossible. He got private investment into space science but I think frankly it is not the way for space science to go. Beagle has some very positive lessons for us but also some important lessons as to paths we should not go down.

 

GS: Possibly Colin and some of the other projects were forced into this position because of the lack of government investment?

 

BS: We’re all forced into all sorts of positions from lack of government investment. It’s very easy to blame the government but frankly we live in a democracy. So the government is our government. We voted for them. We form the politicians and the politicians are responding to what the general public wants. Most politicians are not interested in alienating the general public. So we’re all responsible. I don’t buy blaming the government, that’s too easy.

 

I’m a person who believes you get into things. You don’t stand there and start saying, “I want to do this.” “How do I do it?” You get in and you try and work out how to get the system to do what you feel it ought to do. I think it’s very dangerous to say the government should provide more money. You should put the government in the position that it has to provide the right amount of funding. That’s a very different…

 

GS: Yes, that’s a very interesting fascinating area. Different nations within the European community, of course, tackle this differently. But if I can ask you, one of the things I heard you say this morning was how to involve the broader public into processing some of the data that comes down from various probes including Cassini-Huygens. You are very much in favour of the SETI At Home project, the Stardust At Home – a similar sort of thing - and the recent Galaxy Zoo - distributed computing. That would be to involve not only the public but it also would be a way of addressing…

 

DS: Listen, I believe in getting involved and I have to say this is part of getting involved. The only reason I like astronauts is because if you see an astronaut do something an ordinary human being feels a vicarious involvement. They think there but for fortune would go I. And for me, involvement is what it’s about. What I like about the projects you’ve mentioned is people can take part and what I particularly like about the projects you’ve mentioned is that the project couldn’t take place without the mass involvement.

 

What I don’t like is the idea of scientists being slowed down by having to use unskilled labour or whatever. What I like is using unskilled labour to do exciting things.

 

I must say something else. I like the idea of in a similar vein is to take people beyond where they could ever go but take them to real places. Virtual reality can give more people a sense of what it might be like to stand on the surface of Mars, for example, than we’re ever going to be able to do by running a tourist service there.

 

And I believe we’re human beings and I believe the most important way for human beings to live is to be involved in things, is to join in, is to feel part of something. Feel part of your society. To feel part of your government, (I’m afraid!), and part of the cultural endeavours of your society. And what I love about these particular projects is it allows very young people, not highly trained people, to realize their bit matters.

 

GS: The European Space Agency collaborates with NASA and the Russians. Do you see development in that collaborative field with China, India and Japan in the future?

 

DS: At the moment, we probably collaborate more with Japan than… well it depends - in different areas we collaborate on different things - but I would say, I spend more time in cooperation with Japan; with China, we’re continually talking to China. We just had a very successful mission, just finished Double Star. Chang’e, the lunar orbitor, we are providing support to the Chinese for that.

 

Basically we have… in India we have instruments being launched on Chandrayaan later this year, going to the Moon with the Indian Space program. Their start of space science. They’ve got a very big space program but it’s very applications oriented. They now feel self confident enough to start doing space science. The first place they’re going is the Moon. We’re part of that.

 

Myself, I see space science in particular as neutral territory. It’s where Nation can speak unto Nation and I think one should. I mean, again, it’s involvement. I believe that the best way that we human beings can best manage our planet or manage the environment of our planet is for us to learn to work together and I think in these grand projects we break the ice. We get people working together and it’s a major element of my program is to find effective international cooperation.

 

GS: That generates not only the successes up there but a better quality of life for us down here.

 

DS: I certainly hope so.

 

GS: Thank you very much indeed, David Southwood from the European Space Agency.