Through the Adversity, the Stars

Royal Air Force Motto

The history of the politics of Space has always been colourful. I was reminded of this when I recently stood in the Imperial War Museum in London looking up at a V2 rocket that stands prominently in the lower hall. It remains a disquieting fact that the first man-made vehicle to breach the Karman Line (the widely though not universally agreed line between Earth’s atmosphere and Space) was a V2 rocket, designed by the SS Colonel and Nazi scientist Dr Werner Von Braun. Years later, Dr Braun met his public downfall when his past caught up with him, after he helped design the Saturn V rocket that made the Apollo Moon missions possible. In many ways this prelude to Space Travel’s journey puts Elon Musk’s politics in context. Future centric minds have sadly not always been liberal ones.

It would seem today that the politics of our relationship with Space are in flux. Legendary NASA Astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s public endorsement of Donald Trump’s second run for the presidency last year raised speculation that his Administration would see an advantage in having a renewed US Government commitment to Space. This speculation was raised even more when in his second inauguration speech President Trump talked about putting “Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars”. Since then, drastic budget cuts to NASA proposed by the Trump Administration, including the decimation of its Earth Science’s division, has shown that Trump has little interest in Space as a long-term project. Even the long-awaited US Artemis Programme, heralded as the great return of Americans to the Moon, has its future in doubt. The People’s Republic of China is now widely seen as on a more certain path to get to the Moon before the US mission, reinforcing the image of the US and the West in decline.

I was delighted to hear that the policy motion “A New Hope for the Space Industry- F42” passed at the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference 2025. This comes at a time where developments in relation to Space in the UK are at a curious crossroads. A few weeks ago, the UK Government announced that the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) would cease to be an independent Executive Agency and instead become part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The Government’s justification for this is mainly to avoid the duplication of jobs and they have assured that the UKSA’s identity won’t be compromised. I take their points as potentially having some legitimacy, but I remain sceptical. In it’s relatively short history UKSA has become well recognised within the community of other Space Agencies. Indeed, the trend to downgrade ours seems to be going against the trend of other Western European countries, to keep their own equivalents independent of wider government bureaucracies. There are legitimate concerns that this move by the Labour Government may threaten the UKSA with a loss of independence and the loss of a long-term strategy, which may be exacerbated by Cabinet reshuffles brought about by an increasingly unconfident government. I hope that our party, particularly those concerned with the recently published paper, will keep vigilant that the UKSA does not become another victim of politics.

Why should we bother with Space? As US President John F. Kennedy referred to attempts to climb Everest for the first time; “because it is there”. On an economic, strategic level and a human level we cannot ignore it. Currently, the UK is a respected manufacturer of Satellites. The opening of Spaceports for Commercial Satellite launches will help boost the Space Sector of the economy. The Ukrainian use of sunspot activity to evade Russian radar to sink the Moskva in the Black Sea shows just one way that Space and military strategy intersect.

On a more human level, I get tired of the narrative of managing decline of this country. Let us turn the narrative and talk about what we could do, instead of what we can’t. While the US is on an ideological crusade to mutilate its Space Agency, other countries are getting the confidence to set a new course. The European Space Agency (ESA) after setting out it’s ambitious “Strategy 2040”, has even talked about developing its own reusable rocket capability. Who knows what UK-European cooperation in Space could achieve?

Space is too big and its opportunities are too many for the Populist Right/Alt Right to completely occupy it. It is time for liberals to reclaim Space.

* Zachary Barker is a Lib Dem activist in Bristol.