“The space industry is political ... Most of my job is government relations”

What was it about your time at Hull that you think has prepared you for a career in the space industry?

The space industry is political. The biggest customer of any space company tends to be government and there are lots of international bodies. Most of my job is government relations.

When I was at Hull, I ended up going down a politics and economics route. Dr Simon Lee brought in the financial elements of political decisions and space is very related to that.

Because everybody thinks space is just about engineering and scientists, it means that there tends to be rather a lot of jobs for anybody who's not an engineer and not a scientist who can do the commercial aspects and the business aspects and the government aspects. Working in a very engineering-heavy field as a non-engineer gives you a viewpoint that people are often appreciative of.

And how was it that you ended up going to the University of Hull?

Hull was my insurance choice. My mum dragged me kicking and screaming from Somerset up for an Open Day and, basically, I fell in love with it. When I got home, I went to UCAS and changed my number one choice to Hull.

If Hull had a space industry, I would have never moved away. I met my wife, Em, while at university, and the long-term plan is to move back.

Do you think that the connections that you made at Hull have been beneficial in your career?

What is interesting is when you find out somebody else went to Hull that you randomly come across and the connection that creates.

I've been out to Australia, Southeast Asia at all sorts of places for this job, and I'll meet people who've moved there, but went to Hull. It just gives you something to talk about.

There’s also a surprising amount of people from the University of Hull in the space industry. But also because of the work I do with a lot of people from government, I meet lots of government people who went there.

In Westminster there’s what’s called the Hull Mafia – a load of people who all went to Hull. Many former students end up working there or becoming politicians.

You had a career and then you decided to found a business. That's brave and different. What made you decide to do that?

Because I wasn't a very good civil servant.

I started working for a space company called Talis, which is where I met my co-founder, Andrew. While I was there, I did all sorts of jobs. My first ever job in that company was legal and contracts. I used to have to review the contracts for space missions.

Now, the missions were fascinating. The contracts were not. Basically, the long-running joke is you're not allowed to launch a satellite until you've produced paperwork that weighs more than what you're trying to launch.

In my next role, working on early-stage space concepts I met my co-founder Andrew, who did the engineering for the Advanced Concepts Group. He basically came up with crazy ideas – mining asteroids, hotels on the moon, how much would people pay to play quidditch on the ISS? He used to bring all these ideas to me, and I'd question who would pay for it.

And then one day, he brought the technologies that sit behind Space Forge and said, what do you think? And I said: “This is the first thing I think I could sell.” He agreed and when we found out it only costs £10 to register a limited company, we did it. (I should say by this point we were in the pub. We'd had a few pints!)

We've gotten as far as we have to date through sheer naivety from when we started. When you have a belief that it's possible to do it and you don't have the hard-earned experience that would prevent you from ever reaching that decision, you go for it.

In March 2020, Andy was working out of his girlfriend's garage. I was working on a fold-out dining table in our flat in Bristol. We eventually moved to Cardiff, which has a really good engineering segment, and is one of the few places in the UK with a coastline that you can return a satellite to. That’s one of the things we’re aiming to do.

Fast-forward to now and we’ve raised Europe’s largest financing round for a seed-stage space company. We’ve just closed our Series A financing round too – the largest series financing round for a space company ever. We’ve got 70+ people and offices in the UK, EU and America.

Does that sound a lot when you say it out loud?

It does. I take stock once a year and write a post with a round-up. That’s when I’m able to say: “Oh, we did all that. I’d forgotten!”

Knowing that part of Space Forge’s mission is to bring things back from space to be reused, it’s clear you have a real passion for the planet and doing things differently. Where does that come from?

Broadly, it comes from the fact that the space industry is often kidding itself when it says that it's contributing to climate positivity. There are lots of companies that will tell you that they're carbon negative, climate positive, net zero or whatever. Then you find out that most of them have paid to plant some trees somewhere in a monoculture, and use that to offset their carbon emissions and get some tax breaks.

At Space Forge, we want to use the space environment to directly address some of those challenges. Space Forge is a materials company first and a space company second.

We produce compound semiconductors. These are the inorganic crystals that go into computer chips. We currently do that on the ground in one of our pilot facilities in Cardiff. From very soon in this year, we’ll start the process of demonstrating our ability to do that in space.

The reason for that is the combination of the microgravity and the high purity vacuum of space allow you to create crystals up to five orders of magnitude higher in purity compared to doing it on the ground.

The purity of the crystal is incredibly important because the purity dictates the efficiency at which that crystal can operate. That's driven by how well that crystal knits together and whether there's any impurities in it. The purer the crystal, the more efficient the semiconductor, which means less energy needs to be consumed to run that chip.

In turn, that improves the thermal performance of the chip, which means again you have another compounding effect on the energy consumption.

As an example, right now into a 5G mobile tower, we send in 1.5 kilowatts of energy – that's 1500 watts – to get out 100 usable watts as actual mobile phone signal. Swap one of the power amplifiers with one made in space. You only need to send in 500 watts to get the same 100 watts out.

Our goal is that for every kilogramme of CO2 we create at Space Forge in making these semiconductors in space, we can prevent up to 80 tonnes of CO2 being emitted in the infrastructure where we get deployed.

That is serious multiplying factors!

Yes. If we’re out even by an order of magnitude, we’re still good.

Hull is well known for that kind of unconventional thinking and it’s clear you’re a brilliant example of that. Have you got any words of advice for students going to Hull?

Say yes to everything. That was one of the best pieces of advice I got – just say yes. Figure out how you'll do it later. In part, that's what led to Space Forge and, also, what led me to go to Hull in the first place.

University is an opportunity to both massively expand your horizons and become your authentic self. You’ll find your people at university. And you'll find out lots about yourself as well. Universities basically exist to make you better people.

And take advantage of all Hull has to offer. Hull is one of those rare cities where it doesn't have an us and them when it comes to the students versus the rest of the city population.

It’s an incredible city. Having studied Politics, I'm evidently also a bit of a history buff. So, it’s incredible to be able to go and sit in Ye Olde White Hart in the plotting parlour, where they stood up to Charles I, to then walk down and see the house where Grace Darling launched her boat from to rescue those chaps from the lighthouse. (I should say as well, Em is descended from Grace Darling's family, so we've got a really strong link.) Then there’s the Old Town, and then you've got things like The Deep…

I just really miss it. My uni years were some of the fondest years of my life. It's been 10 years since I graduated. It's remarkable what three years can do in terms of an impact on the rest of your life.

For more information about Space Forge and the work they do, head to their website.