Technically possible? That part is easy

Former ESA chief Jan Wörner brings a broad vision to #Seraphim advisory role

Notable this week is news that Seraphim Capital has taken on Jan Wörner as a senior advisor. Any former director general of the European Space Agency is sure to be a valued team member at a space-focussed investment group, but Wörner’s particular experience is worth a mention.

His 2015-2021 term aligned with the great acceleration of the so-called “new space” transformation. Wörner’s predecessor, Jean-Jacques Dordain (now chairman at Rocket Factory Augsburg) oversaw, from 2003, the initiation and impressive growth of ESA’s Business Incubation Centres network. By the time Wörner took over, the rate of change in the relationship between government space agencies and private industry was going exponential. Fostering start-ups became an urgent priority – and remains so for Wörner’s successor, Joseph Aschbacher.

As a reporter, I have always been impressed by Wörner’s holistic view of this transformation. He clearly dislikes the term “new space”, but not only because it implied that an organisation like ESA was “old” space. Rather, he had a notion of a “new paradigm” of partnership between the public and private sectors. Historically, ESA – like NASA – drove the space sector through programmes and contracts; today, Wörner once reflected, ESA is often asked to support entrepreneurs not with money but with knowledge.

Second, Wörner is not afraid to be visionary, even when vision collides with the messy reality of institutional budgets and international rivalries. It is not a secret that his early tenure saw some friction between France and Germany, though history may judge Wörner – who headed Germany’s DLR aerospace agency prior to joining ESA – to have been a visionary, even  a world-changing, ESA chief.

An early Wörner theme was the “Moon village”, a sort of intellectual architecture that would allow national and commercial partners to participate, as it suited them, in a permanent human and robotic presence on the Moon. The initial reaction from Europe and NASA ranged from indifferent to dismissive – but the Artemis return-to-the-Moon concept being pushed forward today is, in all but name, the Moon village: collaborative, international, flexible, project-oriented.

French president Emmanuel Macron gets the vision, too (ESA/P. Sebirot)

And, Wörner has an uncommonly broad view of the purpose of technology. I had the pleasure of interviewing him in 2014, while he was still head of DLR, and was struck by his belief that we are in a fourth stage of the industrial revolution.

This is not the computerisation or microelectronic revolution that is so often cited. Rather, Wörner sees the Industrial Revolution playing out in an early stage characterised by the wonder of new technologies and ideas, followed by a second phase in which technological solutions were imposed on people by engineers and politicians who believed they knew best.

A third phase dates back 20 or 30 years, when the public was increasingly asked if a solution would be acceptable; see, for example, the lengthy debate and consultation over expanding London’s Heathrow airport.

The fourth stage is much more recent. As Wörner sees it, public acceptance is no longer enough – today, people must actively support a technology or solution, and the move from “accepted to supported” is a “big step”.

Politicians, scientists, engineers, business people and organisations like ESA must, in Wörner’s view, recognise that the public is a driver of technological solutions and not merely a receiver of them. People expect to be asked what they want – not what technology they want, but what outcomes they want – and then it is the job of policymakers to consider possible technical solutions.

This insight has profound implications. Business people naturally want to sell whatever solution they have to hand, but there is a great danger of driving down dead-end paths in an age when money is cheap and it seems possible to mould technology almost at will.

The challenge for investors, then, is to distinguish between what is technically possible and what is genuinely practical, acceptable and likely to be widely adopted and even embraced.

Onward, upward: Wörner and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst head for the launch pad in Baikonur to start the German's 2018 International Space Station mission

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Dan Thisdell adds: I write about European spaceflight: industry, politics, science and money. After a fruitful mid-career at Flight International, I am preparing to launch a newsletter for space industry investors: Geoconomy. Watch this space and contact me via LinkedIn - especially if your company should be profiled.