Monthly Archives: December 2012

Space Tourism

Innovation, , ,

I’ve got a number of policy/personal interests; energy, crime data, tennis and space – and a couple of new platforms that I will be revealing soon. Following my paper for the IoD on Space: Britain’s New Infrastructure Frontier back in May, here’s a link to a video which I only just discovered on the BBC website interviewing me about the potential for Space Tourism back in July or rather (as I argued) the potential for research. I’ve since addressed a number of feedback points about the report in this post – Yes, the UK will need a spaceport. For most people though, this won’t become real until XCOR and Virgin Galactic first launch their suborbital vehicles some time in 2013/14. In the meantime, the regulatory framework is still to be determined – I have this year sat on two UK Space Agency workshops on future Space Plane regulation.

Anyway re: the photo and video above – did they really have to put in a moving space backdrop of planets in the background?

I must admit, it is quite funny !

Debating shale gas again . . . on the Daily Politics

Energy, Security

Amazing. You wouldn’t know that in the whole country, all we have are just 4 exploration wells, only one of which has been partially fracked and all of them have been suspended from activity for over 18 months because of 2 tiny tremors that didn’t break a single teacup. Compare that to the USA where roughly, around 35,000 shale gas wells were drilled in the last 10 years and around 105,000 fracks were made.  So let’s not get ahead of ourselves – we wouldn’t need to do anything like that much.

People seem to be focussed on the making of a shale gas well which can be noisy and disruptive for a few weeks and completely ignorant of the total silence thereafter for up to 40 years while it is producing gas straight to the national gas network. Personally, I’d much rather live next to a shale gas well than a wind turbine !

Nevertheless, nearly everyone is very taken with the potential and the safety issues. And having looked at them closely in this paper for the IoD, I was more than convinced that shale gas is not only safe but an economic, environmental and energy security gain too.

Not everyone’s convinced though (and not just Gazprom and President Putin!) – here is a shot from me debating with Caroline Lucas MP of the Green Party on the Daily Politics yesterday on a freezing December afternoon – still on iplayer here about 45 minutes in.