Career opportunities in the UK space sector

The announcement late last month that the Chancellor, George Osborne, is planning to put a chunk of the country’s meagre resources for capital expenditure behind a British project to develop a revolutionary jet engine for a reusable space plane, suggests the government has high hopes of the space engineering sector.

Just how much cash is to go to the Skylon project, run by Reaction Engines Ltd in Oxfordshire, has not been revealed, but the news is a sign that things are changing in the British space industry. 

After years of sitting on the sidelines, as others joined the space race, Britain is now preparing for a period of massive growth in the space sector. Why? Gone are the days when space was just about moonshots and national pride; today the market for advanced space technologies and applications is global and growing, and Britain wants to increase its share, from six per cent to 10 per cent by 2030; the mission is nothing less than the rebalancing of British economy itself.