Cosmos Briefing: Connected Through Space
[Music] welcome all to the cosmos briefing my name is professor alan duffy lead scientist of the royal institution of australia an organization established to raise awareness of the value and relevance of science and scientific methods in everyday life showing through conversations like these and engaging content on social and digital media with cosmos how fundamental science is to our lives now as the australian space industry forges ahead data gathered from space will connect everyone from farmers to land managers emergency services and more with the real time changes on earth in my new detail but these kinds of breakthrough technologies don't simply just jump from lab to industry they need to be translated into products and even spun out into companies to achieve national impact so what's impeding the connection between cutting-edge research and the people who can benefit from its use as a service and who are the space entrepreneurs paving the way towards a connected australia to share their thoughts on an out of this world topic are dr elena fane currently the commercialization specialist in csiro's astronomy and space sciences business unit and led the spin-out of quasar satellite technologies from their technologies group prior to that elena was the founder and ceo of leo cancer care and has held numerous research academic and science project management positions across medical physics and radio astronomy and then joining us is a real-life rocket scientist former propulsion test engineer at the european space agency flavia tatar nardini who as ceo and co-founder of adelaide based fleet space technologies is launching 140 nano satellites into space by 2027 which fleet will use to collect billions of sensors that can track and change uh to track sorry the changes across industries and ecologies across the globe she's also mission chair of the seven sisters moving mission the australian lunar exploration mission sending natal satellites and sensors to the moon now before we begin our discussion i'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which i'm joining you today that were andrew people of the kulin nation i want to pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging and extend those respects to all aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples joining us uh alanna i'll have you kick us off what does the current australian space industry sector look like uh yeah well thank you alan the the current sector it looks like me it looks like flavia and it looks like you and i'm not i'm not saying that flippantly at all it it is it's a collection of um different backgrounds and platforms and skill sets really coming across from from various um technologies and i'll talk to that a little bit more but in general the space industry is growing enormously in australia and it's growing as interest in space derived data really start to infiltrate everything we do business and everyday lives so space is already very important to the way we live our lives not just whether you need a sun hat or an umbrella it's also how you get your cash from atms it's how telehealth consultations are provided it's how you get your toilet paper delivered from woolies in a lockdown and it's becoming more and more critical as more and more downstream businesses across all sectors recognize the value of space direct data hence why i'm saying it's it's you and it's me and it's flavia so we've got the rocket scientists and we've got uh people like you and i who are astronomers by training who are looking at repurposing technologies outside of the space industry to to come on in now with the rise of the australian space agency and the australian government's commitment to supporting nasa's goal to return humans to the moon and onto mars the profile of the australian sector really is booming currently it's estimated to be worth around three to four billion dollars a year and the aim is to triple that creating tens of thousands of new jobs now the sector is not new uh it's just growing and changing differently of course for 75 years this country has been doing fantastic work building earth observation technologies astronomy is is a has a long long history uh space and satellite ground stations and complexity so on some of some of those points indeed you mentioned they represent critical areas of competitive advantage that australia through either location or just just investment has has been able to pioneer really capture that leading edge what what are those kinds of of critical areas more broadly and what are the the game-changing technologies that are getting you excited yeah so you can plug your own i will so so you know australia has a has a growing space sector and the way we're going to grow this and triple the number of jobs and and and um and the economy in space is by doing things a little differently to other people by focusing on what we're very very good at and where our competitive advantages are and that's on the geography the location of the country it's on understanding how space can um be used to solve australia's own massive challenges better than disaster recovery water management climate change and importantly it's on um harnessing the research and development and innovations from parts of our community and parts of the science and engineering ecosystem where we already have world leading capabilities and advantages and in that i think that they really are places like astronomy i'll talk to that more in a second life sciences as well remote automation and remote sensing now in terms of astronomy um you might notice that i'm i'm although i am in lockdown in sydney and in my house i'm actually at the western australian emergency radiate astronomy observatory at the ascap telescope now behind me on my head is a piece of technology that was invented by the same group that invented wi-fi that it was was invented and installed on 36 dishes in western australia to do very very sensitive measurements and mapping of the sky of the extra galactic sky i should say for astronomy and what we realized over the over the last few years because we were trained to realize it was that this technology actually can be repurposed to completely disrupt satellite communications for the growing space sector who is looking more and more at putting thousands of satellites flavia for example she's only putting 140 out there so each of these satellites that are going up um they're going into low earth orbit so they're moving really really quickly across the sky and they all need to communicate with the ground and what we realized by taking that little checkerboard thing and putting it facing up to face the the satellites we can actually connect to hundreds or even thousands of these satellites simultaneously and so by repurposing radio astronomy technology we can completely disrupt the the satellite ground station market and this is really important and you know it's why fleet for example joined the spin-out company quasar satellite technologies that was recently spun out of csiro with the support of both federal and state governments and a whole range of sovereign australian industries and so you know we have an enormous capability and world leading competitive advantage in in astronomy in this country and there is so much more um inside all of the astronomy groups around the country to to just do what we've done with with the quasar example i've given you here so now i'll turn to you flavio on that you know near perfect segway uh take us through the uh the the landscape that that fleet is operating within and and the focus on end users and really how you've grown a company that is that is taking the world by storm i think you know thanks uh very much alan and you know lovely to be here to start with um i think what is interesting to share from me is the point of view of can okay i am a rocket scientist you are different from me you are still astronomers like what is super interesting is that around the world there are people building startups and space startups that are not don't have our background uh you know there is uh elon musk you know doesn't have our background that didn't do our studies why am i talking about this because the the environment in which fleet operates an environment that can actually create startups and grow as paid startup being funded by private money so we are in a time in the world in which it's not just government or or states or grants that help companies to grow and historically space has been i mean space is hard and it's historically just to put anything in space is billion of dollars so clearly it will not be done by a girl my age or you know someone that doesn't even have uh you know a degree but nowadays what is super interesting is that the the economics has changed so it's possible for a space startup to actually raise vc money it's actually possible to grow there is just one important caveat that i think it is it is what all the big space entrepreneurs are doing has to have a purpose that is really economically beneficial really fast and it's not that easy so how can we we bring us technologies in space and build companies that have an impact and in term of an impact a social financial very very fast in order to raise more money and grow these companies so when we founded fleet that was one of the first base startup in the country i remember everyone telling us it's going to be really hard to raise vc money it's going to be almost impossible to raise busy money in australia because you know the valley usually is where the money comes from for startups in general and space startups are new in the valley as well like just this year we have seen the first startups having an exit the first pace startups is the very first time in the history of silicon valley so this is how new this is and we were in australia but we did raise vc money and we did it with the idea of okay we're going to build a constellation of small satellites what we're going to do to help industries so we're gonna do to help money and oil and gas and energy grids and maritime to actually digitalize their operations so there was that direct connection between okay i'm gonna build uh something in the sky but it's going to serve an industry and several industries and this industry will pay for it to actually finance my growth and finance this space conquer exercise so it is really important to understand at least all this is very very new so in the past uh 30 years we have seen explosion of the software economy and you know all startups that become unicorn building you know some delivery tool for breeds and it's fascinating and now we have these space companies trying to do the same exercise um and as you said alan the key of success is being very very very very downstream focus and customer focus that i have to say it's not something that teaches a university like i'm i'm an engineer by training and i have been taught to build things for perfection not build things for clients you know so it also implementing a different mindset when you build a company that is different type of engineering is staged it is with little steps try to achieve something it is very very new in complex engineering really really really new how important to you flavia do you think in your particular instance but more generally for the sector that government's role has played i mean south australia you know really has grabbed an astounding number of space companies and and of course the headquarters of the space agency and other other um laudable outcomes but is does government still play a role for all of the venture capital funding that you've been speaking about listen you know um the answers in the middle okay in a sense that we have to compete globally when we fleet and quasar we are not just doing something for for here we're completely competing with companies all around the world and unfortunately companies all around the world they they do uh they are heavily supported you know by government and grants think about nasa nasa is a huge entity you know so everyone that builds a company in in america and u.s is supported by this massive entity okay so i think the government understand the rule that it has i'm also a big believer that you never win by yourself you know um we need to attract money we need to attract talent we need to attract so much in australia and to have this to grow and it is the momentum or an ecosystem that makes it up it's not like if fleet of gilmore space succeed then everyone will pour money every now that's not the case you know because usually you know the hub of innovation like was israel or now is new zealand and now australia is becoming as well that attract attention from everyone so the government the state government and the federal government at this very important mission to foster the ecosystem to because space is hard you know in space you can it's not a software ah i got a better software of my app and i'm gonna put it online thick no we put things on rockets we build very complex things it just doesn't happen overnight so there is a support that needs to operate in terms of infrastructure internal regulations in terms of being there to help this ecosystem to grow manufacturing because the other people out there in the other countries are super supporters so how we're going to compete and you know i found fascinating that australians companies are you know very humble and at the end of the day they achieve 10 times more of everyone else with 10 times less that i think is pretty pretty cool um south australia has an amazing job because straight away even before the space agency was formed they they saw that they were space startup you know raising money try to support them um i do think there is a long way for in general australian startup um to try to make it without having to count on the government so changing a bit of philosophy government is there government government will help and it's helping but is but we need to build businesses we need to build businesses that will help us in the first phase that will help us in the face when we need to scale up scale up really big even in manufacturing and we need things that are really expensive but along the way we have to make it happen we have to find clients we have to increase our revenue we have demonstrated we can stand on our feet so i'm um yeah i don't think people understand how exciting is being in a country that is just former space agency that there's that momentum we've got the eyes of everyone looking at you as a country that is kind of leapfrogging and everyone is like what's gonna happen i think it's pretty exciting yeah well look i certainly share that excitement i think everyone watching can feel it as well so uh atlanta i want to ask you how how important is the role of the csiro as one of the the nation's largest quite frankly are in the uh centers of excellence what what is the role for the csiro in in growing that industry look i think i agree with flavia's words on state and government support i um i think this one is is not just for startups i think that you know the space industry is much larger than the startups the startups are incredibly supportive because they are the agile ones they're the ones that largely will be responsible for getting out uh innovative technologies out of research organizations out of universities and and bigger industry will then collaborate with or cannibalize for one of a better word those those steps and and grow um the startups will be the supply chains into big businesses but the big big business in australia space or otherwise are just as important and in terms of the the the need for government support to grow the space sector and that need really is one all about supporting businesses large and small to adopt new innovations um in in any which way that is so that is in repurposing technology from one group to another to another sector uh in record helping to be involved in recognizing new business opportunities on new business models that the industry could have by utilizing space derived data bridging the valley of death for anyone trying to commercialize early stage technology a big one for csiro as well as the universities and the government here is promoting stem in general and and the role of the education department and the role of schools and and to train the generation who are then going to become the next flavias and and the next allens because the space industry is um is growing really really quickly and the limiting factor is going to be generating the next generation the generation after that to send people to mars and and keep going so csiro has a large space program it has a number of uh technology development platforms that fund specifically new science around space it does a whole range of space tracking and deep space tracking for example we operate on behalf of nasa the canberra deep space tracking center we operate the new nausea facility on behalf of esa um and and sarah has a number of innovation connections and and small kickstart programs to encourage um startups and industry to work with them to generate new technologies but in general what i really truly believe is it's inside places like csiro it's inside places like the universities where there is a wealth of really great ideas um and maybe even really great commercial ideas that are unrecognized or even if they are recognized there is a bridge too far between the idea and commercializing it and getting it out there and that's certainly the case um in in the sector we work in in astronomy where there is a terrific wealth it's the case in in the medical technologies it's the case in remote sense you know the the organizations that have really fruitful pure science research and development programs and and i mean you know doing pure science for the purposes of doing pure science um have a latent capability to translate those innovations out to other sectors in space yes this space is one of them and so what csiro does and what the universities i hope are doing and what the government's role um to support really is is that bridge between the idea and the entrepreneur right the the the bridge between the engineer that was latvia and the ceo that is flabby and now not everyone can do what flavia has done and so the you know having a pool of experts who are trained specifically to take technologies find business cases get venture investment um and translate them out it's it's a critical role csiro has and other groups have um that they themselves fund because they understand that a really great innovation in industry doesn't necessarily lead with a founder first mentality there is a huge value in leading with the great idea first and putting the founders and the innovations in after so that distinction then between perhaps the the research scientist who makes the discovery and again i complete agreement with you today's discoveries are tomorrow's translatable innovations marketable products um but taking the scientists away from the the uh translation aspect of their own discovery and instead putting someone in who has that experience as you said how do you how do you scale that so much of our research is undertaken within closed lab doors or you know quite frankly most of the uni is unaware of what's going on let alone outsiders trying to peer in so maybe both to to flavia and then alana how do you go about finding these pearls of ip intellectual property that sits within uh our research sectors i mean what was something that always fascinates me when i came to australia is understanding how many cool things australia has invented you know something that i don't think the word knows like you come here you're like ha wi-fi was invented in australia and black box was involved in australia and this and this and this and that and you know and always what is always very fascinates me is what you know i was talking about there is this this pool of invention of patents and ideas and massive gap on commercialization it's an australian this is the i call it the australian you know complete like this is like a sucking hall of don't know what happened there like all these smart people and then suddenly you know it doesn't come out that i think is yeah i've been here not enough and not enough in the sector to understand absolutely the culture of this so i don't understand all the aspects um what i know is uh there are there are i mean like vcs okay they they go into universities to look for the gems they do you know they go and they walk around um corridors to look for gems they they really do there is though um there are some very profound topics that will be really really difficult to build in a startup like look how all the work of quantum computing has been done in university or in australia like if someone 20 years ago was building a startup to develop that it would have gone nowhere right you didn't have the support he didn't have the long-term mission and the long-term resources to do that so i think there are some very profound deep tech topics in which that cannot happen on startup or they just have to be moved out but um but it scares me like you have to bear in mind that i'm an engineer i'm a nerd you know i've been there i've done my my work in a lab not knowing what the world needs and what scares me is that you know we started fleet with no no tech we started fit with an idea okay we had no patents and now we got 60. you know and we have developed peter and and that's the good aspect of the story like startups need to do r d i mean we spent 20 million in r d in the past six years you know because and we have done r d inside a startup that is a weird way of operating but we have done it after one and fears where we understood what was needed in the market so it kind of we have done it opposite way around there is a another startup that is competing in our space in in athletes called mariota and mariota and fleet are in the same market one started with uh two entrepreneurs and an idea one my co-founder is a business guy and i'm an engineer and we had an idea as european and mariata started with 25 patents and two phd so you see both of these companies coming to and i'm fascinated about this dynamic right you know what is the thing that actually works i mean i think time will tell i guess okay but i think they're doing all right as well yeah maybe both gonna work but this is that that's how how it's it's fascinating you know it is fascinating you know try to understand how to uh bridge that gap you know sometimes we we're like you know we develop our patents based on what we're seeing in the market the market changes i have to admit i don't have enough experience to understand why australia's got this problem on commercialization i i i just know that um there are some fundamental technologies that need to be developed in on on university levels because they take a long time and they need a lot of research and um but others that they should be way more developed outside and together with university and bring all these smart people to work for us you know you know in the past six years how many times i contacted unit say hey get your phd to come and work here okay no no no no they stay university i'm like no because you know in university they have a phd in three years and by the time the phd is done i don't need what they have done anymore because you know three years i'll be dead okay so i need them to be here and understand how we can but it's still that so that's the only thing that is still that friction to say no we don't want them to go we want them to stay next to us so i think that has to happen people don't understand how fast is the market i want to give a shout out to swinburne who's taken up that that challenge and it's called the impact phd where several phds are embedded as a cohort within it will happen and then they get that experience yeah not all of them do it only a few at a time yeah um now look let me let me in perhaps in the interest of time we run on we've got this uh this opportunity that you mentioned earlier uh elena the the agency is growing the space sector as you mentioned as a target for some 12 billion uh there's an additional 20 000 jobs uh by 2030 that you mentioned and you touched on something fascinating and that was you know where do those graduates come from where do we grow and train the skills and reflecting perhaps on on what flavi has just spoken about it the challenge with the even the phd so how do we train up all of these people and what are the kinds of skills that they need uh so um i will just backtrack slightly before i answer the question because i'd like to just make a quick point i i i don't see that commercialization in australia is a problem i think it's an opportunity so i think that um what what flavia might view as a bottleneck and a real problem when you're inside the system and you're you're you're seeing how it operates i actually it's a very streamlined system and there is a lot of opportunity and i think that in the space sector it relates to the fact that this is new people haven't been thinking about how can my ultrasound patch um help an astronaut how can my um high frequency x-ray system track you know radiation on space travel people haven't been thinking about that though those connections have to be made so i i really think and we'll get to the stem and the next generation i think that the commercialization in this industry in terms of getting ideas out and and creating innovations yes the vcs do go down the hallways and and try and take opportunities but they want them graphically designed in canva they want them looking pretty i know that because god loved main sequence ventures who just invested in quasar really wanted everything in canberra and quite frankly that's that's fine it's there's a job before the vc walking down the hall and that's people who are inside domain specific that can look at the physics look at the equations look at the applications and take that pop that in canva and say now martin will you fund this for space in any case it's about relationships and connections and collaborations and it's about funding and support at grassroots yeah in universities and in csiro and places where they go yes we need to do this so it's about the desire to do it we want this as a priority let's put in place all of the structures that we actually know work um to make that happen now the bottleneck i see coming is the fact that in uh in five years from now who are we gonna hire to run these companies bobby already said she's gonna be dead in three years it's a shame we're going to have to replace her and we're really sorry before i'll be 40.
so let me give you an example close to my heart this this technology we spun out into quasar satellite technologies was 10 years in the making inside of csiro a 200 million dollar australian government-funded radio astronomy facility we then spent two and a half years building the case to spin it out and get it funded and it was then funded in in startup company venture capital thank you main sequence new south wales government thank you physical sciences fund csiro continues to support it and four industry parties across the country it's going to um generate two or three hundred jobs in the next decade that's the plan it's going to be huge it's going to be enormous now those two or 300 jobs are coming from all sectors engineering physics science business development marketing finance ip law all of that and we need to um train people to to come into that sector so what i'm extremely passionate about and i will continue banging my fist about this is something similar to what you've both said and that is sure phd internships 100 i'll take the one that you weren't patient enough for flavia the one that's going to take three years we'll take them um but also graduate programs so so students finishing their university degrees have got graduate programs inside of these space companies or technology companies at all so i think that's really important so yes phd interns are one thing but graduate positions where you train them and and you keep them and you you can replace flavia when she dies okay so again emphasizing flavia in great health i'm in great help okay having your help let you know i'm capturing racing now so maybe after you know we do a lot of graduate positions i flee but not i don't stop there like i get from year 7 to year 12 kids coming here for a week or two weeks there was uh i have to admit uni uh schools i chose a lot of girls because i mean this is my my passion to bring them you know to into this type of and to make you smile like we got this beautiful girl yeah 11 last year and i wanted to go on holiday so i was away for one week she was the ceo so she had to do all my meetings and do all my stuff it was great okay so it is and i had some of the students through uni here all the way through their five years to the point that at the end they're like i can't come next next next holiday i need to graduate that i'm like who needs that graduation you got a job you know it is really important really important to convince everyone like from high school students even to go and spend their holidays into this this the sector it's just about getting to know how it works getting that passion so i really like we do it all the time we are and it's hard for a startup to get you know five six people constantly they have to learn they have to be around some of them now i've started to do digital uh digital apprenticeship so hiring 18 years old that are not going to uni to teach them to code you know so it's our responsibility to to do all these things you know to build tours it doesn't start even at the university right it starts all the way down in primary school exactly space and technologies into general education but you know i have to admit like and fleet and a big passionate about this and a fleet we we bring our kids you know when i went through school holidays you know kids from five to eight to ten and they're here they're all together and we put them in a room and we give them cardboards and they build rockets and they do this over and over again and over and over again and they come here and they come here with the rocket launchers and they come here when there are meetings and they're in the meetings we need to bring the new generation expose them to it and don't get me don't get me wrong it's not easy to build a startup with five years old running up and down to the stats to the stairs of every employee but this is them this is generation is gonna make it up in the next 20 years you know it's them you know and they and the gift that we're giving them is enormous i think that's a wonderful place to end our chat today it has been all too quick but uh alana flavia thank you so much for joining us today uh we'll have further reading and resources on this topic and ways to follow our guests today and their work at the cosmos website in fact you can head to cosmosmagazine.com to see all of our activities at the institution and to subscribe to cosmos magazine and if that quarterly magazine is not enough make sure to sign up for cosmos weekly the best of original science reporting delivered to you each and every week many thanks to our sponsor ase for making today possible if you support science and its communication please support our work at the royal institution of australia stay safe stay smart go science [Music]
2021-08-17 04:02
