Youth Not Wasted: Better Satellite World Day in London 2019
OK, so my experience this year for the First Better Satellite World DAY in London started with a woman from New Zealand assuming that, because I live in New York, I personally may know the current President of the USA.
(For the record, I do not.)
It didn’t really matter though because she next whipped out a copy of the US Constitution and forcefully handed it to me with the following suggestion: “This is THE Instruction Manual for your country. I would advise you to read it and then give a copy to your leaders.”
(Again, for the record, I have read it but have not memorized it. I am working on it.)
The young Kiwi then went into a very articulate ramble about the need to make sure that our oceans are sustainable and that we use all the “smart” technology and data we can to influence people to protect the seas, enforce maritime rules on fishing and work against a range of hazards that really could cost us everything we know and love.
I was pleased to tell her that I was in town to give an award to an organization, Geeks Without Frontiers, that was focused on a model that can better address illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, overfishing and seafood fraud. The model supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), particularly in the areas of innovation, industry, infrastructure and life below water.
She was pleased to hear it.
“Sounds like Oscar Wilde was wrong,” she concluded.
I thought to myself, that’s a good way to open the 5th annual Better Satellite World Awards Dinner.
And it was.
This year’s recipients challenged a few stereotypes, including Wilde’s oft-quoted phrase that “youth is wasted on the young.”
It may be true that 61% of young adults have “no problem” with a society that is “entirely materialistic,” according to a Pew Study.
But many are also solving problems with a passion that defies the material world. Like young Abhas Maskey of Nepal, the project manager of the BIRDS-3 satellite project, who accepted the award for the BIRDS program. He is focused on helping his country leverage the new era of space for national benefit and the BIRDS program revealed the real strength of this industry: international collaboration. Countries from Bhutan to Turkey, who once had no business dreaming of a space agency or program are now putting up cubesats and moving in the direction of the commercial space economy thanks to this program.
Another Western leader once said that “government is the problem, not the solution.” But the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme has supported relief through 12 disasters, provided satellite data to 25,000 farmers worldwide, trained 300 rural health professionals and delivered satellite Internet learning tools to over 34,000 students, while also providing satellite solutions to 1,000 fishing vessels. Good enough for government work? Our jury thought so. And so did Mr. Chris Lee, the Chief Scientist of the UK Space Agency, who came to 116 Pall Mall to accept the award from Milbank’s Nick Swinburne. His acceptance was articulate and commended SSPI for being the only agency that identifies how satellites can make a better world.
Former Monty Python star Eric Idle refers to himself as a “failed pessimist.” I suppose anyone looking around the rooms of GVF’s HTS Roundtable and the SSPI UK Chapter’s Better Satellite World Awards Dinner arrived at the same conclusion, perhaps years ago.
The oceans and the economy are now part of the domain and the responsibility of our industry. We may continue to be “invisible” but the indispensable aspect showed itself again in London on the first Monday in December.