As space industry democratizes, tiny Singapore could play a leading role

A cubesat satellite in space.

The software industry is nurtured by a stream of shared knowledge. The snazziest apps rely on open-source programming languages and frameworks. There’s an unspoken credo in Silicon Valley about giving back to the community. This distribution of free intellectual property led to the growth of the internet industry, and we’re seeing the same movement (embodied through Arduino) starting to impact hardware creation.

The space industry has also caught on to the philosophy. Thanks to an open-source satellite design called Cubesat and the growing ecosystem of open source designs for Cubesat ground stations, network protocols, and other supporting technologies, building a satellite has never been easier.

The small size and low cost of these satellites has led to faster development cycles that mimic the software industry. The flowering of commercial space enterprises means that launching a satellite has become more accessible and cheaper too.

Once in orbit, these space cubes can fulfil many purposes depending on what you mount on it. They can take photos of specific locations on earth, detect maritime and aerospace movements, or even sense earthquakes. The keyword is ubiquity – because it’s cheap, companies can launch many of them into space, providing blanket coverage over the planet. And they burn up in the atmosphere after a certain time, especially if they’re launched in low orbit. That takes care of the space debris problem, vividly captured in the movie Gravity.

Previously the domain of superpowers, the space industry is being democratized. Now, even Singapore can partake in its benefits and engineer its own vessel in the space race. Especially Singapore, which already houses a strong electronics manufacturing industry that makes up 5.2 percent of the country’s GDP.

“Satellites are actually just computers with radios and solar panels. They’re just like any computer. A lot of the key components are electronics and precision-manufactured parts. So these are all things Singapore already has over the years in our experience making semiconductors, in making consumer electronics, in making handphones and parts,” Yi-Hsen Gian, chief information officer of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), told Tech in Asia on the sidelines of the EmTech Singapore conference.

“Not only do we have the manufacturing expertise, we have the design expertise. All of these now actually can be used in developing new products, components, or payloads in space,” he continued. Given how much of a “profitable niche” the space industry can be, the EDB even set up an Office for Space Technology and Industry in 2013 to coordinate activities in that arena, be it in the universities or the government agencies.

Playing to its strengths

From left: former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, Virgin Galactic’s Steve Isakowitz, Gian Yi-Hsen of EDB, Daniel E. Hastings of SMART, Kay Soon Low of Nanyang Technological University, and Chris Boshuizen from Planet Labs

In a speech during the Space 3.0 segment in EmTech, Kay Soon Low, director of the Satellite Research Center in Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, broke down a satellite launch mission into three components: the space segment involving the building of the satellite, the launch segment where the satellite is mounted onto the rocket, and a ground segment where an earth-bound station communicates with the satellite.

Singapore can play a major role in everything but the launch bit, which Gian says would require a safety buffer of at least a 30 kilometer radius (Singapore is only 50 kilometers long from East to West). Everything else is fair play, from the research and manufacturing of satellite components to its operation to the creation of services that leverage on data streaming from these space computers.

“I think a lot of the value will be found through the services [derived from satellites and their data]. That said, the hardware manufacturing is also very exciting because it is also a relatively high-value industry. A lithium-ion battery may cost you $5 in the shop for your handphone but it may cost you $5,000 for something of equivalent capacity but put in space because of all the rigorous testing and more stringent requirements,” said Gian.

While the barriers to the space industry is still prohibitive especially when compared to software, starting a space startup in a garage – reminiscent of what Steve Jobs did when he founded Apple – is now possible. That’s what Silicon Valley startup Planet Labs, which launched nanosatellites into space to take high-resolution photos of the earth, did. It even attracted an investment from famed venture capital firm DFJ led by Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper, who visited the garage where Planet Labs started and were convinced the company had the goods.

Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer who became the co-founder and CTO of Planet Labs, said during EmTech: “They came around to our lab and saw at the time the very mediocre and meager progress we’ve made and they were impressed and decided to invest in us. What impressed them the most was that we actually had hardware, we weren’t just a paper company […] we were actually doing it and we were hell-bent on doing it, and we’d already made substantial progress and had a prototype satellite before they even showed up. So all they had to do was pay for the launch.” The company recently raised a US$95 million series C round.

Photo of irrigated fields in Arizona USA captured by Planet Labs.

The case of Planet Labs at once highlights the opportunities and challenges that Singapore faces in building its own space startup ecosystem. As Gian puts it, the government wants to attract space companies to Singapore while building up its own talent pool through the education system as well as grant calls to encourage research through the universities and A*STAR, the government’s research agency. Innovation could also come from government-linked corporations; ST Electronics has been launching its own satellites into space.

Startups like Spire, which uses nanosatellites to provide maritime data, and Astroscale, which is developing technology to clear space debris, have set up operations in Singapore. But for the industry to truly rank among the world’s best, it’ll require something that’s in short supply in the country: a dose of crazy and the legendary garage entrepreneurialism best embodied by the can-do startups in Silicon Valley.

Misfits – the ones with radical ideas – often don’t have a place Singapore, and investors here lack the audacity to back longshots. Though as the startup scene matures, that may start to change. Singapore itself was a misfit when it left Malaysia and set about the task of building a global city. Decades on, the government has a plan for reinventing the country once again, and the wheels are set in motion. It’s a process of glacial transformation that favors societal stability, a philosophy at odds with frequent talks of “disruption” within startup circles.

But even gung-ho entrepreneurs benefit from a stable society where basic needs are met, and a calibrated approach has so far served the state well, allowing it to overachieve as a startup ecosystem. In reality, Singapore is still at an early stage of transformation, and the fruits of the labor won’t be fully realized for years.

See more: This Singapore misfit is now kickstarting Australia’s space industry

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