‘Bubbling of excitement’ as Cornwall prepares for UK’s first orbital rocket launch
There’s a “bubbling of excitement” in the team preparing for the UK’s first orbital rocket launch but they are “laser sharp” as final checks are carried out, says the mission’s boss.
The Start Me Up mission sets out from Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay Airport, with the launch window now starting around 9.40pm on Monday.
It will be the first orbital launch from UK soil – or anywhere in western Europe – and comes after technical issues pushed it back from before Christmas.
“Space launch is a very serious business and we’ll be looking at integrating all the information about the system, about the weather, about the range,” said Virgin Orbit boss Dan Hart.
There won’t be the fire and noise of a NASA launch however.
Instead, a modified Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl will carry the 21-metre LaucherOne rocket – which contains a number of small satellites – to 35,000ft before it fires into space and eventually reaches 8,000mph.
It’ll happen about an hour after take off and the event will be livestreamed online.
“Right now everything is green” for launch, Mr Hart said on Sunday afternoon.
However, he added they were “proceeding cautiously” and are prepared to delay if necessary as there are other launch opportunities in the next few weeks.
“The rocket was armed yesterday [Saturday] and we’ll be loading fuel later today. So we’re in full motion right now,” he told reporters.
With the rocket attached below the plane’s wing, he said crosswinds were something they needed to keep an eye on.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Space team ‘excited but focused’ for UK launch
Among the satellites on board are a prototype orbiting factory for making high-value alloys and semiconductors, and one to join a constellation of satellites monitoring illegal fishing, smuggling, trafficking, piracy and terrorism.
Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall, said the teams involved had “absolutely smashed it” and she was feeling confident ahead of the big day.
“I just feel so excited… I cannot wait for the UK to join that exclusive launch club because it’s gonna feel good,” she said.
Mr Hart said putting the satellites into orbit would be relatively quick once the rocket is in motion.
“We’ll do a three-minute burn on the first stage, followed by about six minutes of second-stage burn. We’ll coast around Antarctica, come up around near Australia, then we’ll watch the final burn and the payloads deployed.”
He said “everything needs to go right” for the mission to work.
Read more:
Everything you need to know about the UK’s first rocket launch
How to spot the first rocket launch from UK soil
This map shows when the rocket will be visible to parts of the UK and Europe
The rocket will be visible to most of the UK within moments of ignition
The Cornwall spaceport is the first to get a licence in the UK, but more could follow in the coming years as demand from businesses to launch small satellites increases.
“There are seven other spaceports that have been identified in the UK for both vertical and horizontal launch,” said Ian Annett, Deputy CEO of the UK Space Agency.
He said Snowdonia in North Wales and Glasgow Prestwick Airport were among them and that local authorities were looking at those opportunities.
Some “futureproofing” was done at Newquay Airport to make it capable of also serving as a spaceport, said Ms Thorpe, including strengthening the taxiways and turnpads to ensure the Virgin Orbit plane can manoeuvre easier.
“When Virgin are not here we can open it up to other companies,” she said.
“We have a brand new facility that’s opening that will have other space companies – it’s full and we haven’t even opened it yet. That’s how excited people are.”
The business secretary will next week hold talks with dozens of private sector bosses as the government contends with a significant corporate backlash to Labour’s first fiscal event in nearly 15 years.
Sky News has learnt that executives have been invited to join a conference call on Monday with Jonathan Reynolds, in what will represent his first meaningful engagement with employers since Wednesday’s budget statement.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, unsettled financial markets with plans for billions of pounds in extra borrowing, and unnerved business leaders by saying she would raise an additional £25bn annually by hiking their national insurance contributions.
An increase in employer NICs had been trailed by officials in advance of the budget, but the lowering of the threshold to just £5,000 has triggered forecasts of a wave of redundancies and even insolvencies across labour-intensive industries.
Sectors such as retail and hospitality, which employ substantial numbers of part-time workers, have been particularly vocal in their condemnation of the move.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
On Friday, the Financial Times published comments made by the chief executive of Barclays in which he defended Ms Reeves.
“I think they’ve done an admirable job of balancing spending, borrowing and taxation in order to drive the fundamental objective of growth,” CS Venkatakrishnan said.
His was a rare voice among prominent business figures in backing the chancellor, however, with many questioning whether the government had a meaningful plan to grow the economy.
Mr Reynolds held a similar call with business leaders within days of general election victory, and over 100 bosses are understood to have been invited to Monday’s discussion.
A spokesman for the Department for Business and Trade declined to comment ahead of Monday’s call.
First things first: don’t panic.
What you need to know is this. The budget has not gone down well in financial markets. Indeed, it’s gone down about as badly as any budget in recent years, save for Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
The pound is weaker. Government bond yields (essentially, the interest rate the exchequer pays on its debt) have gone up.
That’s precisely the opposite market reaction to the one chancellors like to see after they commend their fiscal statements to the house.
In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.
After all, the new government just committed itself to considerably more borrowing than its predecessors – about £140bn more borrowing in the coming years. And that money has to be borrowed from someone – namely, financial markets.
But those financial markets are now reassessing how keen they are to lend to the UK.
The upshot is that the pound has fallen quite sharply (the biggest two-day fall in trade-weighted sterling in 18 months) and gilt yields – the interest rate paid by the government – have risen quite sharply.
This was all beginning to crystallise shortly after the budget speech, with yields beginning to rise and the pound beginning to weaken, the moment investors and economists got their hands on the budget documentation.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Chancellor challenged over gilt yield spike
But the falls in the pound and the rises in the bond yields accelerated today.
This is not, to be absolutely clear, the kind of response any chancellor wants to see after a budget – let alone their first budget in office.
Indeed, I can’t remember another budget which saw as hostile a market response as this one in many years – save for one.
That exception is, of course, the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget of 2022. And here is where you’ll find the silver lining for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
The rises in gilt yields and falls in sterling in recent hours and days are still far shy of what took place in the run up and aftermath of the mini-budget. This does not yet feel like a crisis moment for UK markets.
But nor is it anything like good news for the government. In fact, it’s pretty awful. Because higher borrowing rates for UK debt mean it (well, us) will end up paying considerably more to service our debt in the coming years.
Rachel Reeves leaving 11 Downing Street before the budget. Pic: PA
And that debt is about to balloon dramatically because of the plans laid down by the chancellor this week.
And this is where things get particularly sticky for Ms Reeves.
In that budget documentation, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the chancellor could afford to see those gilt yields rise by about 1.3 percentage points, but then when they exceeded this level, the so-called “headroom” she had against her fiscal rules would evaporate.
Read more:
Chancellor defends £40bn tax rises
Hefty tax and spending plans a huge gamble – analysis
In other words, she’d break those rules – which, recall, are considerably less strict than the ones she inherited from Jeremy Hunt.
Which raises the question: where are those gilt yields right now? How close are they to the danger zone where the chancellor ends up breaking her rules?
Short answer: worryingly close. Because, right now, the yield on five-year government debt (which is the maturity the OBR focuses on most) is more than halfway towards that danger zone – only 56 basis points away from hitting the point where debt interest costs eat up any leeway the chancellor has to avoid breaking her rules.
Now, we are not in crisis territory yet. Nor can every move in currencies and bonds be attributed to this budget.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Markets are volatile right now. There’s lots going on: a US election next week and a Bank of England decision on interest rates next week.
The chancellor could get lucky. Gilt yields could settle in the coming days. But, right now, the UK, with its high level of public and private debt, with its new government which has just pledged to borrow many billions more in the coming years, is being closely scrutinised by the “bond vigilantes”.
A Halloween nightmare for any chancellor.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway