Space Strategy for Ireland
- Paper number
IAC-15,E1,5,12,x29896
- Author
Mr. James Harpur, International Space University(ISU), Ireland
- Coauthor
Dr. Norah Patten, International Space University (ISU), Ireland
- Year
2015
- Abstract
Ireland, a country revered through historic and modern day culture has now also become a hub for entrepreneurial development and technological advances in Europe. Technology giants such as Google, Facebook, Intel, Amazon, Apple and more are choosing the Emerald Isle as their European headquarters. Add the existing presence of some of the world’s leading universities in science and technology and one envisions a solid infrastructure for a thriving space industry. In contrary, Ireland’s space industry is surprisingly lagging behind other nations across Europe - still without a launched satellite or space agency amongst other notable unreached milestones. In this paper, short, medium and long term strategies are explored and discussed which are envisioned to take Ireland’s current space industry to the next frontier. An overview of successful implementations from other space fairing nations is presented with some details of the lessons learned and recommendations for Ireland. The activities and projects included in this report will focus on providing vision and inspiration in addition to the generation of a new and plentiful space workforce in Ireland. On the horizon is new space dedicated facilities, more international collaboration, launched spacecraft, increases in STEM based students and a significant growth in the private space industry. The paper concludes with a roadmap for the Irish space sector, drawing on the lessons learned and success stories from other nations. The roadmap aims to impact the Irish economy and also influence generations to come. Ireland will have dropped itself into the cosmic ocean amongst the other supergiants of the space world. The ripples of this will hopefully be seen by other non-spacefaring nations around the world inviting them in and leading to this strategy paper being used as a template for their future plan. Pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” The goal is to help the people of Ireland economically and socially by introducing a world class space industry and changing the population’s dreams of space from impossible to attainable. This paper is the plan.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)