Melissa Brobby interviews Rajeev Suri

A landmark study has found that, in contrast to the Apollo generation, younger people are out of touch with the realities of the space industry

Your report, ‘What on Earth is the value of space?’, was released recently. What was it about?

The report is the largest ever survey of public perceptions of space globally and included more than 20,000 people in 11 countries. The reason we did it is because we wanted to understand the public perception. What do people feel about space? Do people understand that space is adding value to their daily lives, what it does today and what it will do in the future? We want to understand what people are fearful of regarding space. We also wanted to know how people feel about space in different generations, because we want to recruit more people into our industry.

How did you discover that Generation Z is taking less of an interest in space?

We found in the survey that those aged 18 to 24 seem to be guided more by science fiction and movies than a real understanding of what is happening in space. Those who lived through the first Space Age were more excited because of the Apollo missions. But now what we do in space has become somewhat invisible: space is used for weather forecasting, navigation and communications, connecting the unconnected, humanitarian missions, disaster recovery, in-flight Wi-Fi and agriculture. So I think since it’s become more commonplace and invisible in our daily lives, it seems that young people don’t have an understanding of what space does.

What topics are Gen-Z interested in around space, according to your study?

There are two topics that came up in the report. The first was a fear of space – an overwhelming majority felt fearful of space, space junk and space debris, while others were unaware of that. The other topics that came up were aliens and space tourism; space being a billionaire’s playground as opposed to something that helps us on a daily basis. We saw that 21 per cent of people associated space with aliens, against just 8 per cent who associated the space industry with what it really does.

Were these findings surprising to you?

It was surprising that 97 per cent of people said they were fearful about the impact of the space industry, and about 35 per cent globally felt hopeful about space. I think it’s reasonable that people have worries about space junk and damage to the Earth’s atmosphere – Ididn’t know people were aware of that. I was also surprised by the lack of awareness of what space does. I think maybe in the days of Apollo people were more excited by the idea of space.

Do you think this study should serve as a wake-up call to the space industry?

I do, and I think it’s important for us in this industry to do something about it because you need public trust. We want to recruit more people into the industry, we need people to be more aware of what space enables. We also have a role to play in educating people and creating the right kind of awareness.

Do you worry that this decline in interest could result in less people going into the space sector?

I think I’m being realistic. We found from the survey that just 7 per cent of people in the UK want to work in the space industry, and globally that figure is 14 per cent. That’s a concern because we want people to be attracted to our sector. We also think that the more people are aware of what we do in space, the greater the public interest will be. And that has a direct correlation, ultimately, to capital coming into the sector. In some ways it’s not a bad thing that people think it’s invisible in our daily lives, but as an industry, we need to create a more powerful and relatable narrative about space so that people understand what it does and what it really is about.

Rajeev Suri is the CEO of Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications company that delivers mobile communications across the world