88. Lord Mayor Coffee Colloquies: Space – Avoiding an Environment Disaster, Mansion House, 5 December 2023

I attended the colloquy today in the Ballroom at the Mansion House as the Worshipful Company of Water Conservators with the Plumbers’ Company will be organising the next one on 16 January 2024 and I wanted to see how it worked.

It was organised by a private company, Astroscale, with ten speakers with four minutes each discussing the opportunity for developing novel finance and insurance products to support the development and exploitation of next generation space technology and in-orbit servicing, addressing the critical challenge of space debris.  They were lawyers, asset managers, insurers, economists, with limited science input.  Interestingly, looking down the delivery of the Coffee Colloquy programme there are no other Livery Companies contributing as organisers.

The audience were predominantly from the finance sector although there was one university academic who knew about the science and practical side.  The real risk to satellites is not other satellites dead or alive, but small millimetre particles which are not so easy to track or avoid but can do devastating damage due to their speed.  During discussion, he also claimed to have identified a now renewable source of energy – arm waving.

The session went very well due to the discipline exerted by the Chair before and at the event.  I discussed with him and the speakers how it had been arranged and the Chair had had video conferences with every speaker to go through their presentation, checking that their message fitted in with the overall objectives and there were no gaps or duplications.  Critically they had to deliver their contribution in less than four minutes, which in the end they all did.  Some read from notes and some spoke to notes but they were all very disciplined.  There were no power-point slides or other visual effects to disrupt the flow.

A single A4 paper was on each seat with the introduction to the event, programme, details of the organisers, and speakers, each with a short biography.  This meant that no time was wasted with introductions or organisational explanations.

After the Aldermanic introduction we had a short talking head video of Michael Mainelli as he is at COP28.

Each speaker was sitting in a row in presentation order on the platform, which was along the long side of the room.  The Chair announced their name and they spoke in turn from the lectern.  As soon as one finished the next sprung up as their name was announced.  It was slick and seamless and was spot on time.

The Chair who was the last speaker remained at the lectern and invited questions, saying that he wanted questions not book promotions; anyone who went more than two full stops without asking a question would be stopped.  As a result the questions were almost all short and punchy.  The Chair invited named members of the panel to respond, who usually identified if they wanted to answer the question.  The answers were also very clear and short.

It was a very good demonstration of how to run such a meeting.

My conclusion from the subject of the colloquy: do not put your money into satellites or any space activity unless you have robust insurance and very deep pockets.  And watch out for future liabilities.  If governments ever get round to regulating this area, and at the moment they do not even ratify international treaties, there is a lot of stuff orbiting the earth which could become a liability and less than half of the operational satellites have end of life plans.  It is the Wild West out there.