The End of the Spaceport Campaign (For Now)

Bringing the UK into the 21st century requires continued work.

For some months now, I have been running a petition to bring a heavy lift spaceport to the UK. We have a model for this having done it with smaller vehicles, and I felt we should aim for where the ball will be rather than where it is, and try to attract Starship to our shores. I’ve previously explained the utility of launching from such a site.

This is a brief UK-focused update; for those not interested in this countries politics I will be posting my normal monthly Mass Value Report in a few days.

Out government has recently announced a general election, which brings a premature end to my petition. As of time of writing, there is still a day left to collect signatures - so please sign if you haven’t. The more signatures at the end, the better, even if at this stage it won’t reach Parliament.

Unfortunately, I did not get enough signatures to have an official response or to have the matter debated in Parliament. What did I do wrong?

Lessons Learned

I’ve a few reflections on what might have held the petition back:

1. The wording of the title was a bit clumsy. When submitting the petition, someone at the petition site had to edit it for publication and I was so focused on the wording of the body that I had not noticed the tautology in the title. This might have made a bad impression.

2. Some of the people I was sending it to may have had a philosophical objection. Many of those broadly sympathetic to the idea are of a libertarian bent and think that asking the government to do things is simply ineffective. I’m not sure this applies to the UK with regard to space matters; I believe we are still at the stage of needing public money injected into space projects.

3. Saturation of online networks. I am fairly sure that everybody who follows me on X has seen the petition, and those willing and able to sign it have done. There was a substantial diminishing return to reposting it. I had hoped to use physical posters to break out of this, but I didn’t have any takers to that scheme and didn’t have access to appropriate notice boards to do it myself.

4. Failure to get a big name on board. I needed someone with a much UK larger audience than me to help spread the word - I approached some prominent members of the media but got no response.

I am keen on feedback, and if anybody has any other suggestions for what might work better in future I would like to hear them.

Next Steps

To continue this campaign, I could simply reopen the petition after the election. I’m undecided as yet if that is a useful move.

During the election itself, it is possible to email prospective candidates to get their opinions on various issues. This might be a good way to raise awareness more directly among decision makers.

Whatever I decide, I’ll be talking about it here, and hope I can rely on my readers to help with the campaign. Please get in touch if you are in the UK and would like to take an active role.

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