 I actually realized I even never really introduced myself earlier. My name is Crystal Azelton, and I am the conference chair for today. If any of you have a problem with anything, I'm probably the person helping you. But I'm also incredibly pleased to welcome on stage our final panel of the day. As you can see from our title listed, we're taking a slight departure in some of the conversations that we're having. At Secure World, we believe that we need to do and find solutions for space sustainability because if we don't, we lose the benefit that we have here on Earth. As fun and as interesting as space is, the reason that we care is because of the benefit that we receive. And so today's panel is to really ask two questions. One, how is space portrayed, space activities, from exploration to Earth imaging to all of the different data and the technologies that we have? How is it viewed in the media? How is it seen? How is it portrayed? And then the second off is that a problem, and what can we do about that? And I have an incredibly diverse and interesting panel here with me today to discuss it. But before we get started, I want to show you all a few images. So if we could queue that up, excellent. So this is a still from the American Super Bowl, from a commercial at the American Super Bowl, one of the most watched television programs in the entire world. That is after Matthew McConaughey. This is his opinion in this video in that commercial of space. It's not time to escape. Was this a Tonganji commercial? Yes. Was it one of two similar ones that actually played at the Super Bowl? Also, yes. This is the kind of thing you see plastered all over social media. Instagram, Twitter, take your pick. And it's presented as, well, we can go to space or we can spend money on something useful. Now, many of us in the room would never think that. We understand that that might not be true and that that's a simplification. But this is how it often appears on social media. Headlines, criticizing the industry. The articles themselves can be fine. But the statements by politicians, the headlines to get clicks, those things themselves emphasize a space race. They don't emphasize why we're going to space. And I would argue that in the race to make space accessible, we've somehow made it seem exclusive. And the headlines absolutely back that up. In addition, I'll share a very short story. At this event, literally exactly one year ago, we had an illustrious panel of climate change experts. Lori Garver, we had the head of the Environmental Defense Fund. We had Thelma Krug from the IPCC all there to share their experiences about how space plays a role in fighting climate change. The vast majority of the questions we received from the audience were about how rocket emissions contribute to climate change. That's not the association that we would assume is made. But I can tell you that in many conversations, that's the one that is made. So our conversation today is why is there this misperception? Why is the public potentially so misinformed or has an odd perception of space and space activities? And just in case anyone's wondering, the numbers back this up. This isn't something that's just an opinion, although we're certainly going to talk about our opinions today. But there is data out there saying that the perception of space, the understanding, and this is just an example. Would you want to be an astronaut? When I was 10, everyone wanted to be an astronaut, including me. But that's changing, or maybe it's changing. And that's what we're here today to talk about. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce my panel. First of all, I have Farzana Baduul, who is a bit of a late find for us. So I want to thank her for joining our panel. But Farzana is a PR expert, the CEO of a prominent local London firm who's recently joined our industry with a set of clients. And she's going to share some of her perceptions as she's gotten to know our industry in the last year and a half. We have Camille Calabillo. Here's in two different hats, shall we say. She is both an important member of OrbitFab, so a new space and in creative and growing company, as well as a prominent online social media communicator. For Newspace and for young people who is going to share both of those experiences. We also have Peggy Hollinger from the Financial Times who covers a lot of technology, but also a lot of the space beat. I think many of you in London will be familiar with her work as well as elsewhere. To talk to us about what it's like being in the mainstream media but covering this issue. We also have Daniel Smith from Aster Agency, one of our Scottish representatives today. And he's not only a former founder of an actual space company, part of the founding team, but he also runs what is now a space PR company. He'll correct me if that's not exactly the right way to say it. But someone who is actively working with all of us to think about what we need to say. And then finally, we couldn't really have this conversation without a representative of the launch industry because so much of what's happening in the media is focused on the launch industry. And so Melissa, who is head of Space Port Cornwall, is going to be able to share how her organization is dealing with this problem, both in terms of the perception of the space industry, but both at a national and a local scale, which I think is also really important. So welcome, hi everybody. I'm going to just jump right into our questions. A couple of quick reminders. We will be taking questions from the audience, just like we have for every panel. So do remember in the app to click over to ask your session. If you put them in the previous session, I won't see them and I won't ask them. So just make sure you're putting your questions in the right spot. So I'm going to start with Daniel. So Daniel, you run a strategic marketing firm dedicated exclusively to commercial space sector. You've also been involved in a number of startups in Space Scotland itself. How do you view this issue? How do you view the current media environment for how space companies portrayed? What is your assessment? Are we being portrayed well? So I think as you've demonstrated at the start, there's still work to be done, right? There's some really good examples out there, but space is still being portrayed as exclusive, expensive, and a lot of focus on big space missions. And I think as a new space sector, we need to think about how we can change that and what we can do to try and change that. But there are, as I say, some really good examples. And I look back when I was starting out, I was involved with an orbital launch company and I was looking around for talent and for suppliers. And I was totally amazed by the innovation and inspirational activity that's going on throughout the UK, the technology transfer, not just on the technical side either, but the non-technical companies and insurers and space law firms that are involved in the regulations. And I was really taken aback by it all. And of course, all of that is enabling the downstream sector where we all know so many benefits to the environment and to the economy and to society in general. And for me, coming from the launch side, like we were talking about this earlier, the downstream side, that's where the rock stars are. You know, that's the really interesting part. For me, more inspiring than a rocket taken off is the things you can do with space data and you're only limited by your imagination. So yeah, I realized pretty early on that space seemed to have a marketing problem. And in order to hit our targets and do what we want to do in this sector, we were gonna have to change that and stop talking to ourselves all the time and get better at communicating outside the sector. And so you actually, you still hear me? Oh, there we go. So Ashley didn't say we set up to try and address that. So probably the most unique of the space companies. Are we all right? Hello. There we go. But there are good examples. You need to shout. Just when I thought we were doing really well without having any technical difficulties. Are you all right, or do you? Yeah, I'll continue. So there are good examples, but. Just wanna come over here. Can we have a moment? All right, why don't you just come over. I think you're doing a lot better. All right, so Dan's given us his thoughts. We'll cycle back. If it's not working out, we'll just have you speak at the podium. We could turn that on. I wanna move on to, of course, to this. So Peggy. So that's Daniel's impression of someone who works on these things from within the industry. But you have a different perspective. As a journalist who covers space activities for a mainstream media outlet, what can you tell us about the challenges you face and how you see the evolution of coverage of commercial space companies and other activities? Would you say it's the same now as it was 10 years ago? What's your take on this? Completely not the same. It's changed quite radically. I mean, I wanna start off by saying one of the reasons why I love covering the space sector is because I think the community, the space community is incredibly welcoming and warm and keen to see people who want to learn. I'm not a space geek. I'm not a tech geek. I'm just a journalist, majored in medieval history, but I have found the warmest community trying to educate me when I do find the right people. So I just want to be clear that this is not a criticism of the space sector and the people in it, what I'm about to say. But I do think there is a problem. Let's think about this. Space has come from a military history largely in many countries. There's still this sense of reluctance to engage, reluctance with a journalist as such and it takes time to get to know people. This is a very complex sector and you do, let's face it, journalists are not gonna be engineers. You're not mainstream media. You're not talking space.com or space news. You're talking journalists, whether it be the Daily Mail, whether it be the Telegraph, whether it be me, who may not be scientifically inclined. And so they will need lots of explanations. So I think for me, the difficulties are understanding the complexity, understanding the technology, getting beyond the suspicion and the secrecy, getting people to bring me in and say, okay, we're not gonna expect you to know everything but let's educate you because it's worth actually investing in that relationship. And for me, again, I want to stress, I have been incredibly lucky with the people I've met in the space industry. But every time I try and sort of reach out a little bit beyond those that I know now, it's actually quite difficult. You have to send in long screeds of emails explaining what you want and you might not get a response. It'll take several days to get a response. At which point you throw your hands in the air and think, oh, I can't be bothered. So I do think that the space sector, I think you said it Dan, needs to stop talking to yourselves and start understanding that the job is partly education of those who will not be off a with what's going on right now at the moment. Yeah, so there are loads of other things I could say. We'll have plenty of time. I mean, I think you said something really key there. I mean, we have a journalist who covers us, who cares about us, who's saying, I'm not getting responses. So is it we don't work press? I mean, that's concerning that as an industry, we're not doing a very good job even answering emails when someone's coming to us, yet alone whether we're making the effort on our own. So I think that's a really, really valuable feedback right there and I can agree with you too. Communication's hard, right? I used to be at NASA where you could crack jokes about rocket scientists and nobody understood that it was funny. And that if you asked for information and you wanted it in plain language, it was really hard to say that no, the average reader doesn't know what a radio spectrometer is. I do indeed have to explain what that means. And so I think that it's a communication issue, right? So Camille, I wanna move to your perspective on this. You represent two important stakeholders in this. So you have this insight into what it is to be a new space company, but also this view from social media. And again, I think there's a wide range of ages in this room. We have a significant contingent of young professionals, but we also have veterans of the industry and this whole social media thing is perhaps a bit mysterious to some people. So tell us about that. What is your view of that, who is actually a communicator, but also an industry professional? Yeah, absolutely. So I run TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, things like that. And I educate about space and make it more accessible to people and bring people into our industry. And so I've gained a lot of followers from that, which is great because that shows that people care about space to some extent, especially when James Webb launched and went all the way out to L2 and was about to show us its first pictures. Everyone, I've had so many videos go absolutely viral on TikTok, which is so cool that they really care about that. But on the flip side, there's a lot of negativity and I see the general public all day, every day just commenting, just their perceptions of the space industry. It's a waste of time and money. We have exactly like that button. We have so many problems here on earth. Why are we spending money and time and energy on space when we should be solving problems here on earth first? And what they don't understand is that their life absolutely depends on space. They literally could not live most of them, the way that they do without space. And I think that that is just a fundamental breakdown where we might design and build and launch a GPS satellite, but if we're not telling the general public that you can pull up your phone and at any given time, you have four GPS signals beaming your phone to get you to a coffee shop like I did earlier, then they're not gonna know what's the point of a satellite. So it's really interesting to see from the social media perspective, the general public's views on our industry, both a mixed bag, right, good and bad. Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, how many of us have had to explain to someone why GPS works even when they don't have cell phone service? Right, right. And that kind of general understanding of a day without space or however you wanna phrase it is not great. And it's interesting to me as you talk about the negativity, right? You see all this positivity and I think we as an industry can kind of assume that that's how everyone sees us. Because to a certain extent, I think that was more true in the past, right? But social media and online is created a space where it's an echo chamber for the good stuff, but also the bad stuff. Yes. So coming at this from the outside, Farzana, you wrote a wonderful article about this that I encourage everyone to take a look at where you really kind of said everything I wanted this panel to say. So for my question, I was sort of saying, your firm has actually started working with UK and international space companies in the last few years. So as an industry outsider, do you think that we under, you've been talking to us about this issue. Do we understand it? How have you and your clients interacted over this? How are you teaching people to communicate better? Well, I'm a complete outsider. And so I, I mean, I think my knowledge of space sort of extended to perhaps Vulcan philosophy and that was about it. And I literally stumbled into space because an NFT artist called Rafik Anadol, who's based in California, was doing a joint venture with Trish in the US and Inspiration4 and taking the data and creating an NFT. And I have a strong background in RPR. So I literally stumbled into the space industry and I thought, my God, this is incredibly fascinating. And then I started working with another space tech client who was looking to raise finance. And what was quite interesting was I had to really sort of build communication bridges between the company and investors, particularly family offices, because they were struggling in terms of attracting investment from private equity and so forth. And so what I realized is here's an industry that actually there's multiple different stakeholders that are not aware of how the industry operates, the potential of the industry, the importance of supporting the industry. And most importantly, how the industry can actually be leveraged in order to find the solutions of some of humanity's greatest existential threats like climate change. And what I realized, there was lots of dots, but there was no sort of connection of the dots. So I thought it was absolutely fascinating. And I would echo what Peggy was saying. Although I'm an outsider, I know next to nothing. I don't have an engineering background. I spent 10 years running a tax company before doing PR so I know nothing about the industry. Incredibly warm and welcoming industry for those people. So I think it's an industry that, I think once we can create this communication bridges with people outside coming into the industry and flourishing and thriving in the industry isn't going to be a problem, but it's actually trying to get that bridge to get them to understand the industry exists and why it exists. And also when you look at a lot of industries and a lot of millennials in Gen Z, when they're looking for jobs and when they're looking for, where should they put all their life energy? So you really think about mission and the industry's mission is not clear because when you look at the sort of sentiment analysis on data, sort of social listening tools, everything goes around launches and billionaires and people just don't feel part of that mission. They sort of think to themselves, well, why should I put my life energy into an industry? That is just about the glorification of sort of three big billionaires out there having a bit of a jolly. And of course that is a huge sort of reduction of what the industry is about but that is what a lot of the public perception is in certain courses and I think that's the sort of wonderful challenge that we have as communicators on how to overcome it. Yeah, and it's about acknowledging that reality. So I think you put it quite succinctly. This isn't about us as an industry or anyone really trying to actually evaluate and judge the value of that. I'm not here to have that conversation. This is about acknowledging there is a perception and what does that mean for the rest of us and how do we fix that? So I thank you for that. I wanna come back to the social media question because I really do think that this is an easy one to ignore. I mean, if you're not someone who really likes Twitter or if you're not like me with teenagers at home who has to kind of monitor that kind of thing and you're seeing it scroll across accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and all they have to say is about rocket emissions. It's easy to pretend that doesn't exist and so I wanna dive a little bit more into that and what are some of the areas that you see? You shared some of that already but what's the perception of exploration of very large constellations? We've been talking and hearing some different perspectives on that today. How are the whole host of activities or are you really seeing it focused on just a few things, this kind of negative social media interaction? Oh gosh, I could write a whole book on this. You should. I should, okay, all right. Can you hold me? No, I think that there are definitely a couple hot spots namely billionaires going to space. Last year, right around this time, actually when Branson and Bezos went to space, oh my gosh, it was awful on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and et cetera. And everyone was just fighting each other about, people in the industry were fighting each other about whether or not they should be doing this but also people outside were thinking like, why on earth are we watching Branson and Bezos go to space? And I'm like, but you don't understand. This is really, really important. And so something that just happened in my close circle, if you guys saw Katya Chasarada go to space a couple weeks ago on Blue Origin, she's a good friend of mine. She's the first Mexican born woman in space and she got to go completely for free, half a million dollar ticket or whatever, their prices, right? Completely for free because billionaires went before her and donated to her flight and her whole life has changed. So they're not seeing that aspect of it. All they see is Bezos, right? Not a lot of people like Bezos. So they just see Bezos and it was worse with him than Branson I think. I think Branson has a different PR aura about him. But yeah, so I think definitely the billionaire is going to space. I think there's also issues with, and I'm really interested to hear Melissa's perspectives here but from the launch perspective, right? People are always saying like climate change, launches, and they don't have any understanding of what the actual emissions are, right? They're just like automatically assuming and I'm not an expert in that either, right? And so I don't like to comment on that. That's okay. On one of our panels, Gavin Schmidt who at the time was NASA's climate scientist did comment, I asked him if he would take the question. And he said, look, we're nowhere near the point where this is anywhere near a problem. So he as an expert has at least assured me that that's not the case. And I've also seen a lot of inaccuracies in a lot of those conversations as well. So yeah. I think I, oh, go ahead. I just want to add something to this point about emissions. Why are we all surprised? That's the question. I'm sorry, but we're going through a dramatic climate change existential crisis here on earth about polluting the planet. Why are we surprised? As a journalist, that is the very first question I ask. But then coming back to what the panelists said, I rang NASA a year ago to say, can you give me these studies? And what the impact is I'd like to do, I'd like to do a piece on this, I'd like to look and I interviewed various people. And NASA said, oh, whoa, we don't have anything. You know, again, I'm trying to do something. If they even had, we haven't got anything really big and formal, but we can tell you it doesn't have any impact. You know, I'd have been happy to write that. I caught him on a stage. But again, it's a problem from journalists. If you don't get answers, you're going to suspect the worst, aren't you? So. It's a good way of putting it. So Melissa, you've dealt with this both from a media perspective, but you're also dealing with a local community. It has its own set of questions around the long entry. So can you share some of your perspectives about what questions do you get? And I'm really interested to hear how you all have handled it because it's not something you can just ignore. I mean, it's not an existential question for you. It's a part of your job. Yeah, and it's a part of my life and my family's life actually. So whereas, yeah, we see the headlines and we hear about what's on social media, this actually happens in person with myself and my team and my family. When we went through a process, a local government process in 2019 where the local council was funding the spaceport, the first thing that local environmentalists did was come at us. How can a council declare a climate emergency and then fund a spaceport? And as Peggy just said, they're right because launching to spaces is impactful and there's such a lack of transparency. So I actually don't think there's massively a fixed spaces PR problems. It's fixed spaces transparency issues. We have 50 odd years of a lot of secrecy out there, whether that is meant or not. That's how the public perceive it. It's not meant for them. There's barriers to it and there's a curtain. And so for us, we've approached it very much like let's bring that down. Let's be open and transparent. Let's have a carbon impact assessment. Let's not just have a carbon impact assessment but let's have a complete action plan that's not just about mitigation and offsetting but how can we bring that impact down? But we don't understand what our impact is until we know and there is hardly anything out there about that. So let's change that first so we know, be transparent about it, be communicate. I have challenging conversations daily with my local environmental organizations with local social groups where yes, it is awkward but I'm doing on behalf of the space industry and I think as we've talked about this industry is really warm and it's really inclusive but at the same time maybe going out into our communities and it is literally bringing space down to local communities and I think that's what we've had to do as I'm sure many of you know Cornwall is a very unique place. Everyone knows each other. I can't drop my children off at school or walk my dogs on the beach without somebody asking me why are you doing this? Are you gonna hurt the local wildlife? So if I am able to actually transparently respond to them but with integrity, I have to first understand what the impact of our launch is and then go out and start to challenge this industry too to start to wake up and I think a really important question here is why? Why do we care if we change people's perceptions of the space industry? Why does it matter if Joe the farmer cares about a satellite monitoring his crops? Well because those people, the public, as new space and the commercialization of space happens, we need them on side so that we can get projects through this spaceport almost didn't happen because the public didn't understand why it was so important. That local counselors almost didn't vote to pass it through. So I think we have to not necessarily convince people but we have to understand why we need to get people on side or at least help them to understand why space is important as well because I think everybody in this room in the future as space kind of seeks into all other industries, we need to tell the story better because otherwise I think we'll just miss out on huge opportunities. Yeah you hit on so many good points there, right? I mean, first of all, you shouldn't be having the fate of the industry on your shoulders when you walk your dogs, right? We need more public facing information provided and we need to have those conversations that can't just be at these certain points and then why you said about the why as well. There's that aspect of it. We're not gonna get what we want and need if we don't. There's the policy. We're here spending two days talking about space sustainability solutions and at least some of those solutions are gonna go through government and so if our governments and our politicians don't understand why space is important and the benefit that it brings, it's gonna be even harder to make the advancements we need so that we can continue to do it. So Dan, I'd like to get your thoughts on this. I mean, we're talking a lot here about the perception issue but let's delve a little bit more into what Melissa was saying, how do we actually ensure we are a good actor? So it's not just about, we'll come back to it, how we portray we're a good actor but I know you have some thoughts about us actually being a sustainable industry and this conversation we're typically talking about space sustainability but what does it actually mean to be a sustainable industry that can say with pride we're a good actor? Sure, so I think the first thing is that we can't bury our head in the sand when it comes to exploring how this sector can contribute to net zero targets and how we can lessen the impact on Earth and also in orbit. And I think looking at other countries around the world that are addressing this issue, I think the UK is in a pretty good position actually to lead by example. I think there are some really good things going on out there and just touching upon what Melissa said about the environmental groups so it's space, Scott and my colleague Christina and myself we set up an environmental task force and right at the start we engaged with environmental groups and it was challenging and there were some difficult conversations and if you're not being a good actor in space they'll definitely let you know but ultimately it was a great engagement because we were getting guidance from them we're finding out what other sectors are doing on their sustainability journeys and just having that sounding board there as well and we did some initiatives of sustainable space challenges that we ran last year with ESA and with a lot of people who were at this event and the environmental groups completely on board with that and that's now led to what we're working on now which is a roadmap for a sustainable space sector where we've laid out 10 work packages and we're gonna sign those to companies all over the UK and start moving those words into actions basically. So yeah, how can we be a good actor? One, make friends with our biggest critics for sure and two, start turning all these roadmaps and charters and action plans and strategies into tangible outcomes here. Yeah, exactly. I like that. Start making friends with our biggest critics and I might add maybe anticipate who our critics are gonna be as Peggy just said and I agree. Are we really surprised by some of this? I think we are. I mean I think the answer is in the industry we are very surprised at times that we think this is really cool and we think everyone loves us and a lot of people do. I mean it is a really cool area to work but as you said, think about who, where the criticisms are coming from and what does it mean to respond to that? And actually maybe the two of you as well, you've actually engaged with a lot of groups directly on this issue in the course of your jobs. What are some of the strategies most of you use? I mean you mentioned transparency but let's dig a little deeper. How did you actually set up, do you have a policy? Do you have a system? Is it ad hoc? What are some of the examples you can give us of how you were successful or hopefully successful at this? Yeah a lot of it just comes down to human communication and actually having the conversation to reach out to the head of extinction rebellion and say let's have a cup of coffee. And that can go in some pretty incredible places where you turn and you say what if extinction rebellion had their own satellite? What would you monitor? What would you do with that data? And so to just have those conversations is such an easy win. And then I think for us from a more kind of strategic level we're looking at things like how do we bring space to a local area? And so we've actually at G7 last year the Prime Minister announced funding for us to do something we've called Kernosat which is a satellite we're designing in Cornwall, launching in Cornwall, tracking in Cornwall and that data is going out through schools and it's for monitoring our ocean health in Cornwall. And so it's literally, it's just a small CubeSat but it will just help us really link a local community to space but also still, as Daniel said, have a tangible outlook but this isn't just a big PR thing, this is for us to be able to tell an incredible story locally. So that's one thing we're doing and we've also just set up a sustainability student group so again, exactly similar to what Daniel said, it's taking our critics that are sitting there saying you should be doing that, you should be doing this, saying great, we'll come sit on our steering group and let's talk about how we are gonna do this. So it's just some of the things that we're trying to just put into places as we're gearing up towards that first launch so that going forward future launches, the community feels engaged in it and I think that's the fundamental issue here is that a lot of the general population just has not felt engaged with space even though they use it every day. So I love that. I can just add that environmental groups use it every day as well so they often will acknowledge, we use this space data as well, we just wanna see you guys being more responsible and I think we have to, not just because it's the right thing to do but because if the UK wants to lead in this area and create a distinguishing, a USP, a distinguishing factor and then we have to do it anyway. So two things. So I wanna make a note that one of our pieces of advice is have a cup of coffee with Extinction Rebellion. If you don't know who Extinction Rebellion is, that's part of the problem. The second thing I wanna comment on there is we started talking about the data side of this. It's easy to focus on launch but there is that data side of it and so Dan, do you think we're telling the story of the data? Obviously, I mean we've talked a little bit about phones and what people use but on a broader level, I mean our data's getting everywhere. There's just a huge expansion of commercial data especially if that's available. What are you seeing in Scotland where there's this thriving commercial, remote sensing industry? Are you seeing a growing understanding of that or is it still pretty remote for most people? I think there's, again, there's work to be done. I'm amazed all the time on a daily basis by the stuff that Space Data Companies are doing with the data. Astros that are here during the pandemic they were looking at how they can locate people in isolated communities to work with mental health charities. You could go out and check on people and this idea that you can use space for mental health and we've got another client that are tracking endangered species with Space Data. I mean there's so many examples we could go into. So I don't think that, I think when you talk about it, it really makes people think, wow, I never thought of that before. So we need to talk about it more. So we wanna talk about it more and Peggy's told us we're maybe not doing a great job with some of the people that we should be talking about it with. So Peggy, let's turn back to you. Let's give some advice here. What can our community do better when it comes in other stakeholders? What can we do better to make your job of translating our activities, our data, our stories? How can we do better? In truth, I think a lot of this is out of your control. So we've talked about the billionaires, we've talked about the launch and the emissions. You have to look at the wider context that the space industry is living in. And we've got huge inequality, inequalities in so many societies and growing resentment against all the tech billionaires that we've had. We've got people really worried about what climate change is gonna do to their lives. And so you can say whatever you want, but as long as you've got Bezos and Musk and the rest of them and people talking about billion dollars of being spent on this, there will be a public perception that money is being spent somewhere that doesn't benefit me directly. The second thing that is sort of out of your control is we're in a digital world in the media. It's no longer, I'm telling you, I'm going through everything that's going on in the world and I'm picking 10 things that you're gonna read and you'll feel like you're fulfilled. I'm now putting stuff up on the web regularly and the web moves so much more quickly and we all have to get clicks on our stories. I mean, thank God the FT is slightly better. I'm gonna say this because the FT doesn't judge things. I wanna have you walk away. I think we judge things by clicks, but they matter because our revenue models are actually tied to who's actually reading us. So it is a simple fact that when you put Musk in a headline, you're gonna get a click. I'm really sorry about that, but then beyond that what you can do is yes, you try and tell the other stories as much as you can, but you've also got other problems coming down the road towards you. We've got, yes, lots of investment in space startups, but the more space startups you have, let's face it, the more collapses you're gonna have. You've had a lot of SPACs. A lot of those SPACs are trading below the levels of where they actually did their deals. You're gonna have some that go wrong. You're gonna have from the financial aspect, you're gonna have people saying, see all the money that was wasted? This is all a bubble. So there are a lot of things you guys can't control. Within that what you can control is being transparent. I'm sorry to drive it home again, but as you said Melissa and Dan, being transparent, being open. I'm sorry, acknowledging that the first question people will ask is why are you polluting the planet when we've got a problem here? And how are you gonna answer that? The fact that NASA could not give me a report on the impact of launch, I find shocking, frankly. And if NASA can't do it, surely the industry should acknowledge this is a wider problem and people will ask that question. And therefore the companies perhaps should do it. Space debris is becoming a massive, massive issue. And when you look at, just think about this. When you look at all these mega constellations that are going up, that feels irresponsible. There are no international rules. We still don't know, as we said, what the impact of all of that launch is having. Just think about the low-cost airlines. Think about aviation. We all loved low-cost airlines because they were able to take us on holiday for $5.99. Fabulous, but actually we're now fundamentally questioning whether we can fly anymore because aviation cannot decarbonize. So is it right that we had 5.99 flights to wherever we wanna go? So is it right that we're allowing tens of thousands of constellations to go up there without any rules and regulations? Yes, you're doing good work, but there's a lot that is highly questionable at the moment. And from a journalist's perspective, that's my job, is to ask those questions. Not to say, and I do believe this, guys, it's a wonderful, wonderful industry and I'm totally excited by space. I love the potential of space, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask those questions and worry about what the consequences are of what we're doing. And until you solve that, you're still gonna have lots of questions. Sorry. No, but it's true. I mean, this is the perspective that we need to hear, so I'm completely fine with that. I mean, I think part of the answer is we shouldn't be surprised when journalists are asking difficult questions and we should be better prepared to answer those that sometimes I'm busy or it's not ready or it's not really that important what the public sees. I think it's easy to not do our job on that side. Yes, there's always gonna be these debates, but I do think we can do better and I wanna turn this question kind of coming from the other side. So Farzana, you actually advise these companies, you help them answer these questions and think about how they're portrayed. And you actually, in your article, you said that while space tourism element of 2021 soured the overall public perception of space travel, your belief is that the attitude would surely change if it was more widely recognized just how much space impacts this all and why there should be more investment in it. So how do you advise your clients? How would you suggest to the industry to be more prepared for what is, as we've established an unsurprising conflict? Well, I think the, just the limited experience that I've had in the industry is always quite difficult when you're working with people with an engineering background who work in some deep tech to embrace storytelling. And the fact is that history is littered with phenomenal technology that never actually took off because they didn't harness the magic of storytelling alongside with tech. The sort of thinking of, you know, if we do something great, eventually the world is gonna wake up. No, if you don't tell the story, you'll leave a vacuum. If you leave a vacuum, you'll breed distrust. If you ignore the FT, by the way, I've never worked in any industry that has never got back to the FT. They considered PR gold. I'm really surprised. It would never happen on my watch. And so it's absolutely shocking. So, you know, you have somebody who's really passionate about the industry, such as Peggy, and industries fall over themselves to court the financial times as opposed to just not giving them the data. So I think it's really about understanding that every single person in this room is a storyteller. We're all publishers with our smartphones in our pockets. We have the ability to storytell in terms of our own personal brands. Just a couple of days ago, I just put on LinkedIn about this panel and, you know, and there's a number of people who are completely outside of the industry who are like, my God, I had no idea there were so many women involved in space. Now, of course, this is not representative of the space industry, I'm sure. But it sort of ceded a perception that actually this is something that is an interesting industry and I think having influencers like Camille is actually very important because it's about recognizing that everybody in this room and everybody in the industry is a storyteller. You can harness storytelling using your own social media platforms, not using jargon and plain speak, so it becomes accessible. And being minded that when you communicate, you have to communicate not in the way that you would with your peers, but with people who have no knowledge of the industry and having that empathy and understanding of language and communication that will enable that sort of that message to land and that excitement to draw people in from outside the industry. I think the other issue is that what cuts through the clutter of the communications landscape is really humans, humans connect with humans. So when we think of the space industry, we do think of the three billionaires and so, you know, other than somebody changing Elon Musk's Twitter password, what we could potentially do is as an industry, really understand that what we need to do is have other message carriers there so that these three do not just represent the space industry because it really reduces the whole narrative of the industry to what they tweet and what they say and what they do. And so they've got a huge disproportionate influence on the storytelling of space because the storytelling has been abandoned by individual companies and organizations within the industry who aren't getting back to the FT, for instance. So it's really about, it's about understanding if the industry can really fulfill its potential and accelerate, it would be by harnessing the power of storytelling. You know, great people like Steve Jobs was great, not just a diagonal thinker, able to work in the technical side but also in the storytelling. I think that perhaps needs to be applied to people working in the industry that it isn't something fluffy for PR people to do afterwards as an afterthought, but really bringing it into the core strategy of the business and understanding that every individual, every organization, taking a look at how you communicate and how can you communicate with impact as opposed to just churning out content for the sake of it that nobody actually reads. Yeah, I think you said that it's a core business strategy and I don't know that we fully accepted that, shall we say. I do want to turn to some audience questions. We have some really good ones rolling in. This one's really interesting. I probably should have asked about this. Probably maybe to Camille and to Melissa. Now, do you think that the negative press that does exist? Do you think it has the potential? Has it already impacted potential workforce in the future? Or are you seeing other young people who are maybe less or more or less interested in the industry? What's hiring like at Space Port Cornwall? I mean, is it difficult? I don't know. Do you think that this is, could change into not just a perception issue, but a real problem for us from a recruitment standpoint? Yeah, I think for us it's been interesting locally because with kids it's really easy to walk into a school and get them inspired about space. That's dead easy. As soon as you get to secondary, it starts to become a bit tricky. I think the fundamental issue is with the parents and the teachers. So I think once they get a bit older and they start to think about their mission and their purpose, I sat next to some university students recently and they're not interested in going and working just for big dollars anymore. They're interested in going and working for startups or a company that has a purpose. And I think when they go back to what you were saying earlier about billionaires, they don't see their fit there, but as soon as they see a startup doing something wicked that Daniel was talking about, they're like, yeah, that's for me. But I think we need to get this message right into teachers and parents. And in Cornwall, we have an interesting thing and I was saying earlier was it's this kind of disillusion that space is coming to somewhere like Cornwall. We got laughed at for years that this is even gonna happen. And here we are and they're like, no, it's still not, we're months away from launching and they're still a bit like not sure. So it's just trying to educate parents and teachers as a starting point because once they're on board, the kids are just pumped. So I think capturing that excitement, but then also using that excitement to say, the space industry's not just about astronauts and astrophysicists anymore, you can help us with these world problems. You can be an environmentalist in space now. And we actually have some really big issues we need you to help us with. So it's the messaging that we're giving to kids and we have this privilege with Sway Sport and Launch that we're now in the next few months, you'll see us all over in the news, hopefully maybe in the FT because I will give you our carbon impact report. But that we have an opportunity here in the UK to really craft how we get the proper messaging out and we can back it up with the regulations and the legislation to say, look, we do care about how we're going into space from the UK. So bringing that all together, you can all help me with that, please. Tell your stories. I think what you said, I've got a chameleon about, I think what you said about, it's easy to get kids excited, but then what does it translate with the day they realize they're probably not going to be an astronaut? Do we as an industry give them other paths or maybe they don't want to be an engineer? I mean, that happened to me, you know? And me, but I didn't have anybody that looked like any of us standing in my classroom talking to me about space and you can do art in space or go into a space force or whatever it might be. It's all of you people in this room that are from many different backgrounds that probably are not space, go into your local schools and start to tell your story and back to the storytelling because then that just opens them up to so many different ideas. And Camila, you're a representative YP. What do you think? I mean, what's your impression of your peers? I think it's already an issue and even with my generation, what you said about what happens when you tell, when they realize it might not be as easy for them to be an astronaut as you like hope, maybe it will be again in the future, but I wanted to be an astronaut as we all did when I was very, very little. And then as Melissa said, I didn't have anybody that looked like any of us talking to me or I didn't think that it was accessible to me. And then I realized how difficult it was to be an astronaut and that like my eyesight would probably disqualify me from being a NASA astronaut. And so I could just kind of gave up and I was like, man, there's nothing in it for me. And being a woman in STEM, like growing up and everyone is a white man in the industry, like let's just address the elephant in the room that we don't like to talk about. I thought that I couldn't do it. But in terms of like, going back to your original question about the perception of the space industry and that it's a waste of time, a waste of money, energy that it's only for billionaires and their toys, right? I definitely do see that it's already a problem and I get so many messages and comments all the time from people saying, how can you work in this industry? Or I used to want to work in space, but now I don't want to deal with the public perception that it's a waste of time and money and it's killing the environment or it doesn't help us at all. Or I used to work at Lockheed Martin before I went to Orbit Fab and I got so many messages saying like, how can you work for a company that profits off war? And that's a whole nother part of the industry that we haven't even addressed, but and so people, I see like Melissa was saying, it's so easy to get people, young kids interested in space, but as soon as they get to like fourth, fifth grade and above it just like severely decreases. And I think it definitely does affect our ability to hire because we need a lot of STEM and art and politics and everything in this industry. They can just go to any other industry nowadays, right? Like especially and they can go to tech and they could do, they could go to a tech company that is whether or not it's actually true, perceived to be helping the environment a lot more than we are or helping humanity as a whole. They can just go to tech and we're losing them. Interesting. So there's a really, really good question here. I'm curious who's gonna have a comment on this. So they wanna know what the panel's opinion of the value of spin-off technology is. So I think when we wanna talk about remote sensing data, we get the chance to tell the story. Like you said, you can talk about wildlife. You can talk, I mean, there's a lot there. We need to do better, but there's a lot of material to work with. And so what is your opinion of spin-off technologies as a reason for space exploration? Is this something that can resonate with the public? And I love the examples here. Velcro, memory foam, solar panels, fanastic stuff. So it's not just about the active, it's about the spin-off idea. Do you think we should be, is that something we should be focused on or is that too, too distant for people to be able to make that leap? I see you nodding down, so I'm gonna point to you first. I think it's part of the message in as well, definitely. It comes back to that upstream side and all the opportunities in the supply chain, but that's tech transfer, technology transfer. I know that people talk about, oh, there's money being spent in space, there's no banks in space, and money's been spent here, so we have this and we're developing for an orbit can benefit us here on Earth. So yeah, it's a great point and it's great to see that come up because it is one that isn't mentioned very often. So from a social media perspective, that's the only thing that gets to people that think that our industry is a waste. You know, when I'm like, actually it was just that space resources roundtable in Colorado and we had this similar, very similar conversation about PR surrounding space resources and mining the moon and going to the moon just in general. And one thing that I'm really excited about for Artemis and a permanent settlement or whatever we wanna call it on the moon and Mars is, you know, like for example, remote and autonomous surgery because if you have millions of people living and working in space and suddenly those people that are living and working in space are not immune to diseases or heart failures or like whatever, right? If they have, you know, right now, yes, astronauts are at a higher health level than a lot of us are, but you know, in the future, that's that we want it to be more accessible to everyone. And so like let's say somebody has a heart failure and they need like, I don't know, the world or the universe's best heart surgeon at that point. Like people are already working on developing autonomous and remote surgeries that can help for third world countries in very remote locations here on Earth as well. And so I think like, you know, we are selfish creatures. We like to know how it benefits us as much as we say that we don't care about that. We at the end of the day do, especially, you know, skeptics and critics of our industry. And so when you start telling them like how it affects, how it helps them and how, you know, the space technologies that are or the technologies that are getting developed for space are directly benefiting them in every way, shape and form here on Earth. All right, so this is a, we think of this internally as like a transatlantic conference. So, you know, we really are pleased to be here having a conversation with so many folks from the UK, from Europe, from America, from across the globe, but obviously with a heavy concentration there. So here's a question. I'd be curious in particular what Farzana thinks of this. You know, is there a difference in perceptions? We've talked about this as it's kind of a global problem, but let's try to narrow it down. Is that true? You know, do you think there's a difference between now the UK or Europe population versus maybe the American population or if anyone wants to comment further than that as well between, you know, space development exploration and a lot of these issues? You know, is it different depending on where you are? I think the earlier data that you showed talked about China versus UK and the US in terms of the dream jobs that the children want to have. I think if you look at sort of countries like, say, you know, India, China, you'll see that they don't have as much of a gender issue in terms of STEM. So then that ends up sort of obviously leading to issues about do you want to bring, we grow up, what do you want to be? So I think there are sort of different aspects involved with different countries in terms of, you know, sort of gender parity and the sort of perception of inclusivity around STEM and around space. I actually did a lot of work in, 10 years ago, in Russia and in Ukraine. And what I found was quite fascinating when I was working in the region is how many women were PhD in engineering and so forth. And it was so much the norm. And for me, I was like, this is so strange, actually. And then I do a lot of work in India as well. And a lot of, I came across a lot of women working in STEM. And for me, it was very different because I sort of just, you know, was very sort of UK-US focused. And I just thought that was a norm. So I think it's important to realize when we look at the world, the world doesn't consist of just the UK and the US, which is, you know, there is a wider world out there. And there are different sort of variables at play that will impact the way that their space industry involves. And I think it's about elevating to a global narrative, understanding that the UK, the US is not, you know, the, you know, not the only two players. And there are geopolitical issues at play, obviously. And that also does impact, for instance, the investor conversations that we've been working on, where people felt, a lot of investors felt, well, I'm trying to invest in this industry and it's so sort of mired in a lack of transparency and there could be all sorts of impacts upon the global supply chain components and the sort of security risk aspects attached to each of these and if there's a shift in foreign policy. So it's quite difficult actually for some people from the outside to sort of understand the risks and it requires a lot more complexity when you're approaching sort of investors. And investors is just one of multiple stakeholders that you need to deal with, alongside children who you need to excite in order to get them, you know, as your sort of future talent. But I would say really take a global perspective. It's, and understand the geopolitical issues that are going to be, that are happening today and will continue to happen in the next 10 to 20 years. And really, I think our issue, particularly in the UK and the US, is actually getting more girls excited about STEM. I've got a 14 year old daughter and I told her about working in space, zero interest. I tried to get it off Kim Kardashian and get her to watch sort of inspiration for Netflix and she lasted about five minutes. And so, but you know, I'm going to go home and show her your videos. And it's wonderful to have women like Camille who actually are, you know, great storytellers that my daughter can relate to because, you know, she can't really relate to sort of Jared Isaacman, so. So we have a lot of really great questions. Does anyone else have any comments on kind of this, the global concept? Is this perceived, you know, are there differences around the world? I would just comment on the investor side. I do think there is a difference, but I think that gap is narrowing. Certainly in the United States, you've been much more advanced and if we're talking about the new space economy here, then obviously in the US, you've been better at funding the startups, better at taking them to scale than we have in Europe. But I do feel, I don't know Dan if you feel that way, but I do feel that's beginning to change. I mean, we've had a real problem with risk aversion here. Investors much more risk averse in Europe than they have been in the United States. I don't think that's the case in China. Interestingly in China, there's, I think they had, there was a story in the FT about there's been more investment last year in the Star exchange, which is their kind of Nasdaq, if you like, then there was in all of the United States last year. I may well have got those facts wrong, but it's a good story and it's quite eye-popping at the amount of investment and risk appetite there is in places like China. But certainly I think that's changing. I think Europe has a big ambition to promote that new space economy. Europe is not alone in that. UK has the same. I think you'll see in other countries as well. So maybe the public perception maybe that will change as we see more companies scale up, as we see more companies succeed. But I would like to just warn you that it's gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride as we go through recession, as we go through high inflation, there's gonna be SPACs collapsing, there's gonna be companies running into problems. So again, it's looking longer term where you will see that hopefully as we can really see the real effects you talked about data, how that data is coming and making our lives easier in very difficult times that maybe people will come to realize the benefits of space. Well, so building on that question, we have one here that is quite a serious question in some ways, right? And it's exactly what you're talking about. So satellite imagery has actually come to the forefront in the media as part of the tracking the war and understanding the war in Ukraine. Obviously we're not gonna talk about using a conflict, but what is your, is that the kind of story that also, how does that play into, as you were just commenting on, it's a very serious real issue and we are seeing a lot of coverage. There's a lot of concern in the industry for other reasons about that. But in terms of a perception issue, in terms of this understanding, is that the kind of example that we need? I think actually, I think there's a good side and a bad side to what happened in Ukraine. It really did, as you say, open up people's eyes to how space and satellite observation could be used. Really, I feel in that sense in a very constructive way, but let's not fool ourselves. It also means the military is even more interested and we will see a lot of defense use of space really shit up the ladder that governments are, this is what I've been hearing in the last couple of months, is that actually that really helped them realize just how flexible and useful it can be. You're gonna see a lot of defense money going into space. I can think of one very big company, which I won't name, but I said to them, not even quite a year ago, 10 months ago, what are you doing in space? And they're like, oh, not very much, we're looking at it, it's a big defense company. And two weeks ago, no, this is totally, this is our focus, this is where we're gonna put lots of money. So you're gonna have another image problem with space being very much associated. But the upside is that it became very real to people. And I would say to you that media is really looking very hard about how we can write news stories using that imagery, using that observation. Anybody got any ideas, please come to me. Because we can start writing stories we could never write before. And I think that's something you should think about. How do you help the media understand not necessarily by telling me, oh, I've got this great company and it's gonna be fabulous in five years time, I don't know, I'm not gonna write a story giving you a free advertisement, but if you can help me use it and help me see what it can do, maybe that's one way to think about how do you demonstrate, you demonstrate it by showing the media what they can do better. It's such an interesting way of putting it, that it's about, we haven't touched on that that much in this, but actually how the media uses the data itself. We've talked a lot about it, covers it, but how it's actually a part of the story. So does anyone else, I have one or two last questions, but does anyone else have any comments on that? The actual role of space in investigating and understanding and telling these very serious stories around the globe. I think it was important when we saw what was happening in Ukraine, something we've talked about in the UK Space Agency talked about is providing the soft launch capability in the UK for the first time ever that we can control the way that we launch our own satellites that are manufactured here. And we've been talking about this for years. And then suddenly in the matter of a couple of days almost live on Twitter, we saw it unfold. And what I saw with my local stakeholders was this sudden penny drop of, oh, this is why we need to launch from home soil. And so that's been very interesting from my stakeholders of this sudden interest in why we're launching from the UK in the first place, what we're launching and how we're launching it, and how we move that forward strategically in the future. So it's fundamentally shifted actually, I would say a lot of the local, say called the perceptions that we've had. But I will say on that it was interesting and some of you might have been there a few years ago at Colorado Space Symposium where we were all there as an industry talking about how great we all were and isn't this great for humanity. And then you had the vice president at the time come up on Mike Pence and stand on stage and the first thing he says, space is the next war zone, I'm introducing you on Space Force. And it suddenly just changed and everybody's head, but it's real and it's happening and we are having to defend ourselves in space. Like this is the reality. And I think pretending that it's not, pretending that it's this lovely Eden plot, you know, that's a huge downfall I think of this industry. We have to be very like aware that this is what is happening. We are protecting lives and we are saving lives, but there's a flip side to that too. So I think again it comes back to as much transparency when we're talking about spaceport, when we're talking about we will be launching defense. We've never said that we're not, but we're gonna tell the story as best we can of why that's important as well. So I think with on that defense topic, it is an interesting dynamic and it does, you know, come up a lot when I'm talking to local people. There's so much we could be talking about. We are starting to run out of time. So I have one other question that touches on a different aspect of media than we have before Sudan and maybe for Zana. I'd like your thoughts on this one and then we're gonna turn to our concluding question. But what about the role, again, we've talked about media but we focused on social media and print media, some of these other issues. But what about the role of movies or entertainment? And there's a lot of space movies. I constantly cite gravity, work at Secure World. We do a lot of debris. I fully admit to citing gravity sometimes to get someone to understand what I'm talking about despite the inaccuracies I understand. So, you know, is this something we should also be pursuing, this idea that this is also about how space is perceived in entertainment and through just, you know, our cultural interactions. Yeah, for sure, it should be part of it again. And I think not just films, but I'm quite surprised that there's not been a kind of documentary or some kind of television show on what's going on in the UK for example. Reality TV show, exactly. Yeah, to be my turn. So, you know, you get emails sometimes about people trying to do, but it's never really happened. I know that UK space are currently working on something with ITV. And it'll be really interesting to see how that's perceived by the public and what the messages are gonna be in that. So that's probably the first time we'll see something like that. But yeah, I think it all helps and, you know, movies create if someone wants to make a movie about, you know, tracking endangered species and what have you, then I'd certainly watch it. But yeah, the more channels, the better. Farzana, what do you think? Yeah, I... You talked about your teenage daughter, you know, is she ever watch anything like this? I think if there's a reality TV show fronted by Jenna Rakhadeshin, she definitely would. So I think, you know, I completely agree. It's not really one channel or the other. It's not, let's do media relations and a bit of social media. You look at all the channels that communicate to the key stakeholders and basically the beauty about sort of, you know, doing documentaries and so forth is streaming. And what's incredible about it is, it's just the reach that you have. And if you look at, for instance, a lot of, you know, a lot of content on Netflix and Amazon and so forth, you have a global audience at a touch of a button. So it's incredibly effective from that perspective. And so if you look at, say, climate change, you think Gretchen Thunberg and what's missing in our industry is, I'm saying our, I've only been here five minutes, but what's missing, I think, in the space industry is really some human faces. And I think if we were to do some sort of, you know, competition or, you know, something a little bit like, think Love Island, but stay with me, stay with me. And think of some sort of competitive format, but it's around all the different technologies, you know, within space tech and, you know, and that's where you could do the storytelling of, you know, take a bunch of sort of space tech, you know, startup entrepreneurs and they've got to go through the whole pitching, telling their story, you know, they'd have a sort of a demo day at the end. And then that way you could communicate the story of, well, you know, I've got this company and I do sort of, I don't know, cameras and satellites, consolation and data sensors. And actually I consider myself a data company as opposed to just a space tech company. And you could do that through human storytelling, through the trials and tribulations and you know, you sort of capitalise upon, you know, the hero's journey and sort of classic communication storytelling techniques and you sort of put that through streaming platforms like Netflix, I think it would be a fantastic way to really, you know, bring the industry. And also, you know, bear in mind that, you know, it's all about human connection. And, you know, that's the way that people just have, you know, 12-part series of, you know, Love Island or, you know, Space Island and, you know, and also, you know, you will just tap into totally different audiences. And that would unleash creativity and really, you know, the way for space industry to tell a story, which is such an exciting story, is to bring in the artists and the script writers and the PRs and, you know, and sort of bring that story because, I mean, I think it's the most exciting industry there is today and I'm just thankful that I stumbled across it. And you're all so lucky to be in this industry. Really are. And I feel as if other people ought to know. And I feel like there's a little secret that nobody knows about. And it just has to be sort of, you know, communicated. They tried to do reality TV with, do you want to be an astronaut? I don't think it ever, I don't think it's happening yet or it might not be happening at all. But yeah, they were doing a contest to like win a flight on, I guess, Blue Origin or something. Yeah, I think there's Space Hero is one of the things that's happening. A few years ago in BBC there was, do you have what it takes to be an astronaut? With the Canadian? Yeah, but it's all, but again, that's sort of going into the same stereotype that space is just reduced to sort of launch. Whereas if you do something broader about these sort of young space tech entrepreneurs and you watch them go through their journey. You know, yeah, like Dragon's Den or... So we've got a lot of, I think we've got it figured out, right? We're just going to start a series of reality TV. I want to close because on our poll actually, so about 166 members of our audience actually weighed in on whether they think this is a problem. And the results are really interesting in that very few people said, no, this is not a problem at all. So a few people said, no, they love us all. Most people acknowledged that they were sort of aware of it. Kind of mixed, but the vast majority think it's, people think it's a mixed bag, right? So it's just a real range of opinions. And honestly, there's so many questions I haven't even gotten to that are all really good. So I mean, I think there's a lot to be said here. I think this is kind of just what I see as the start of a conversation for many of us. So I want to kind of give each of you kind of a minute each to just close out and kind of say, you know, what would you say to the doubters or maybe the skeptics or the people? You know, we've pointed out that some of this comes from a little bit of, you know, some of the more recent tourism conversations. And yet those people are doing really amazing things too. So you know, what do you say to those who are saying, no, we don't have a problem or maybe we don't have a problem or maybe it's not my problem. You know, maybe it's someone else's problem in the communications department. And we've touched on this, but I want to get each of you an opportunity to kind of close with your thoughts to the audience of, what do we as a community need to take away from this? So Dan, I'll just go down the row. So Dan, start with you. Yeah, I don't think it's just even a problem with communicating the benefits of space. I think it's the problem, there's still a problem there with communicating the fact we have a really exciting space sector in the UK. So I guess to the doubters, I would say that when you leave this event and you're heading home on your train or probably not your train, but when you're heading back. We're not talking about train. Yeah. We're talking. So, you know, speak to people and talk to them about the space sector. And I'm sure you'll get a few surprised looks. I mean, I was in the hairdresser the other day because I knew I was going to be on a panel and I was chatting to the guy about small talk as you do and he's asking me what I do for a living. And I start talking about rockets and satellites and space debris. He was moving all the sharp implements away from me as I was talking. So what can we do about that? I think what we say to our clients is, you know, turn your to-do list upside down and start paying more attention to the things at the bottom of the list, like making that announcement about how your technology or your space companies help in other sectors or go and visit that school or write that blog post, you know, once in a while. Because no matter where you are in the space value chain, you've got a story to tell. So get out there and start telling it. You heard it. No matter where you are in the space value chain. Excellent. All right, Melissa. I'll tell you a little story. That's quite a funny one. So, my other half and I were down. We decided to have a weekend away and we went to this fourth roughest pub in Cornwall. Actually, in the UK. So think of like fishing village. All the fishermen came in after work. Absolutely decided to down a couple of pints and we were sat there and sat next to this very drunk guy and he asked me what I did and I told him and he'd, oh, I hate space, poor, I hate space. And I was like, oh, it's interesting. What do you do? I'm a fisherman. And I was like, oh, do you know that we're going to launch a satellite that's going to track illegal fishing? And my other half captured this on camera. And I, you know, we went to this whole conversation and he was like, oh, I had no idea. And then he stood up at the end and he said, I will vote for you. That wasn't what I needed. But that's it. Literally, that's exactly what Daniel said. Please go out and like, you may be working on a tiny little widget, but it's doing something incredible. You've got to tell people that what you're doing and I've people shut off when they hear a space or they back off, but push on, tell that drunk person at the pub what you do and why it benefits them. We've added to the list. So I would say to move it from space industry led to humanity led because I think it will take that in order to really bring the industry to fruition. So what I would say is actually, it's not just about rational storytelling of did you know that Google Maps and your mobile? Yeah, that's all to do space. But also the emotive aspect of storytelling and the need of human connection in storytelling and understanding who are the human faces of the space industry today and the sentiment around them. Bear in mind, I think there was an open letter to Elon Musk from his own employees in SpaceX saying, we're worried about your impact on our reputation. I mean, news for SpaceX is not just SpaceX that he's impacting and so understanding that and really bringing the excitement in because you've got science fiction. You've got all these decades of storytelling that have just made people sort of dream of the industry and why is there a disconnect now? Why is it they are excited up into a certain age and then why does it drop off and it's because perhaps at a certain age children want to go out of the excitement aspect and go into a more mission mindset and so we probably need to just articulate that mission so people understand that it's a core part of humanity's purpose to get to the next step and the next sort of evolution of our journey and we are exploratory animals and it is our next frontier so it's taking everyone with us on that journey. Yeah, oh my gosh, I agree with everything. I think my one big piece of advice is that we're all in the space industry because we all think it's really cool and we all love it, right? This is a very unique industry where you're in it because you love it, not because you're making, you know, boo-koo's of money, which I don't know, I'm not. So, are you guys? But no, like I said earlier, you can go to tech and do the same exact job and you can make more money and stuff like that but like at the end of the day, we are, most of us, I'm willing to bet that everyone in this room is here because they love space, they love the mission, they see the value that it brings to humanity and to planet Earth. But we can get really caught up in how cool it is, right? It's like the coolest thing that humanity has ever done, right? My opinion, see, exactly. It's one of the coolest things we've ever done and we can get really, really caught up in that but we have to like come back down to Earth a little bit, no pun intended, and say, you know, what's the value of what I'm doing? And you know, also communicating that value or also like we've been talking about of like launch emission reports, like actually take a step back and address that there are things that we should be thinking about. Like, you know, are there better ways that we could launch or whatever, right? And do the studies and then communicate that to people and not just turn a blind eye because it's cool. So yeah, I guess that's what I would say. So yeah, it's not about our own echo chamber, not a Peggy. Well, I think that's it. It's not about your own echo chamber and I'm really sorry about that but that as I said earlier, there's a lot that's not in your control but I do think I'm gonna be a slight downer. I know I should be the upper at the end, I'm really sorry but I think we've talked a lot about the benefits to humanity. We've talked a lot about the benefits to the Earth but as long as you've got a space debris crisis unraveling up there, the more satellites you launch, the more questions people are gonna be asking. So I'm really sorry, you'll look like hypocrites if you don't get to grips with that. And I would say the same thing as well for the regulations of all the companies here and I know there are some here that have been very vocal on this for a very long time but we need to start having the business themselves saying regulate us, please, we need this because it is the credibility of your industry and from a journalistic perspective, unless you sort that out, I'll always be thinking with every rocket that you put up there, actually, you're telling me all the good you can do but I have no idea how much potential harm is coming down the road to planet Earth as a result. So I think that's point one. Point two, I also think that a lot of money, we're talking about the musks, a lot of money is gonna be coming into this sector over the next few years, a lot of money already has, you're gonna have more tech billionaires, you're gonna have from the public perception is gonna be a certain amount of, again, more money making these elite people rich, what is it in it for me? So coming back to the wider benefits, understanding the data applications, I think is hugely, hugely important for your industry. So as you said, Fahana, help me understand those applications, help me see in real life what's happening so that I can tell those stories and don't be afraid of the media. Please engage with your critics. We've heard it all here, engage with your critics and when media ask you difficult questions, it isn't because they're hostile, it's because that's our job to hold you to account and so we will ask you the difficult questions. We're not gonna write every lovely story about how you're improving life on earth because we don't know whether it's true or not. We have to watch and see, see it unfold but you can help us with that by bringing us in and involving us in what you're doing and letting us see it in real life. I think that's fairly positive and I wanna just say also, we didn't get into this that much because I really wanted to take advantage of the particular expertise that we have here but you're exactly right, this is about being a good citizen and I couldn't agree more as a representative from Secure World Foundation that we absolutely have to make sure that that's happening, so 100% agree there. So I do wanna take this time to say thank you to our audience, thank you to my panel for a wonderful discussion. I think this is the first of many. I'm gonna go ahead and make a couple of announcements and move into the final portion of our program but again, thank you all so much and yeah, it's been great. Thank you. Thank you.