BIS WEST MIDLANDS: ‘BLASTING INTO SPACE FROM THE UK’
Saturday 25 March 2023 at 1400 GMT
VENUE: Online on Zoom (BIS West Midlands)
Robin Brand will present the current progress on launching satellites from Britain. Please register HERE or via the West Midlands Facebook page.
Talk Overview
Robin Brand has kindly offered to present his talk first given at Space Day 2022, which provides an introduction to current progress on launching space satellites from Britain. This 40-minute illustrated presentation will introduce the current exciting progress towards launching satellites into orbit from the UK. It will provide an update on progress with all the active proposed British launch sites (Space Ports) and also the launch vehicles themselves. It will also explain what the satellites will be used for once in orbit. It will include images and video material of the launch sites and rockets, and questions will be taken afterwards.
Speaker Bio
Although an electronic engineer by profession, Robin Brand (BSc CEng MIET FBIS) has always been interested in space matters, having graduated from the ‘Eagle’ comic and ‘Dan Dare’ (in colour) via ‘The Sky at Night’ on television (in black and white) to membership of the British Interplanetary Society (in 3D!) His early interest was enhanced when science fiction started coming true with the advent of the first orbiting Earth satellites. Those were the days of great public interest, when the times the satellites could be seen passing overhead were published in the daily newspapers, and their data transmissions could be heard on the radio. Many years later, after his three grown-up children had left home, he was able to find the time to carry out the archival research on which his book “Britain’s First Space Rocket – the story of the Skylark” was written. He was amazed to find that this activity took over from his day job, as instead of lasting the anticipated six months, it took more than six years of research and writing! He was chair of the BIS Technical Committee from 2016 to 2020, and project leader of the very successful BIS “Nanosat Launch Vehicle Feasibility Study” Technical Project, which ran for a similar number of years. The latter included in-depth studies on access to orbit from the UK, and in 2019 he a gave a talk on the subject to members of the island council at Saxa Vord on the Shetland Island of Unst, the location of a proposed UK Space Port. This was one of numerous talks he has given on heritage and current UK space topics, both in person and online. He has presented papers at several space conferences, and has had many articles published on similar themes. He lives on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire. Further information: www.skylark.space
Meeting Timetable
• 13:55 – The meeting is available to join
• 14:00 – Welcome
• 14:05 – Blasting into Space from the UK by Robin Brand
• 14:45 ish – Questions and Answers (we enable everyone’s microphone to allow an interactive Q&A session)
Joining Instructions
1. Register for the Talk – Click HERE to Register
2. Before the event, we will send you an email with the joining link for the meeting.
3. On the day, click meeting link (and follow the on-screen instructions to install Zoom if prompted)
Please Note.
The Conference Call and Q & A sessions will be recorded (which may capture your name, picture, voice or video) and made available via the West Midlands Facebook group and possibly via the BIS HQ website. You consent to this by registering for the Conference Call/Q & A sessions.
