Mark Stokes (left) and Tom Clayson believe their technology has the potential to revolutionise space ... [+]
Those of us of a certain generation grew up fascinated by the Space Race, in which the U.S. battled with the old Soviet Union to be the first to put a man on the moon. The television coverage — and subsequent movies, such as “Apollo 13” and “Hidden Figures” — showed huge numbers of scientists working behind the scenes to put those small crews of astronauts into orbit and beyond.
Space missions are very different now. For a start, to a large extent governments have given way to the private sector as the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson have launched rocket programs, while a host of small companies is producing specific parts of what is required.
One of those businesses is Magdrive, a start-up based at the Harwell science and innovation campus in the countryside of Oxfordshire, U.K.. It was founded in 2019 by chief executive Mark Stokes, a mechanical and deep learning engineer, and chief technology officer Dr Thomas Clayson, a nuclear fusion plasma physicist, who had met at Imperial College, London two years previously.
With their small team — the whole workforce numbers just 11 — they have developed a ground-breaking propulsion system for spacecraft which they believe has the potential to transform the space industry. It will get its first real test in the coming weeks, when the Magdrive Nano, which claims to be ten times more efficient than the thrusts in existing systems, is used on board a Space X Falcon 9 rocket.
Magdrive’s technology delivers the high thrust of chemical propulsion systems with the high efficiency of electric systems. The Nano burns its propellant 100 times hotter than a rocket, and uses a unique magnetic field topology to confine a high-density plasma. According to Stokes, this enables “entirely new business models in space.” Because the thruster is smaller and less expensive than conventional alternatives, it make fast and affordable space travel more possible. Among the related applications Stokes and Clayson envisage is satellites being able to to rendezvous with and service larger satellites and so being able to better manage hardware in space, with a resulting reduction in space debris.
The development has caused sufficient excitement to attract £4 million in early-stage investments and grants so far. Its latest financing round was led by Founders Fund, which was an early investor in SpaceX, DeepMind, PayPal, and Facebook, and it was one of 10 global startups selected to join Amazon's 2022 AWS Space Accelerator.
But it is not just the technology that is different. The founders say they have assembled a team with “a unique combination of skills you don’t find elsewhere in the space industry.” Indeed, only two of the team have worked in space before. And perhaps surprisingly for a business that is so high-tech it only employs three PhDs. “There’s a lot of science, but we also need [things like] legal and marketing. It’s becoming increasingly complex,” explains Stokes.
The space industry is becoming an international market and the U.K. government — buoyed by the fact that the sector already employs about 40,000 in the country — is hoping to capture about 10% of that market by 2030. Harwell, which hosts the largest collection of space companies and government agencies in the U.K., is a key part of that effort, with the proximity of so many similar companies creating a network effect.
This has persisted despite the pandemic changing the way many businesses operate. But, unlike many technology companies that have urged employees to return to their offices in the interests of stimulating innovation and culture building, Magdrive has carried on with the new way of working that Covid-19 lockdowns introduced, says Clayson. “For some tasks, you have to be here, but people are able to do a lot remotely. We have created a nice dynamic and that’s really helped with innovation,” he adds.
In Stokes’s view “what’s important is being aligned and being mates.” He adds: “We have built the company we always wanted to work for.” What this means is that there is little hierarchy, with engineers and scientists having a huge amount of control to set their goals and to decide how they will achieve them.
He believes that a lot of the team’s motivation comes from the innate appeal of working in the space industry, where “everybody wants to see everybody else succeed.” But he also suggests that the culture at Magdrive helps, too. Again, unlike at many technology companies, employees do not have to sacrifice salary for shares. Everybody is a shareholder, but they are also paid competitively and are encouraged to take their full holiday allowance.
In the end, though, what will determine how successful the business will be is the technology. So all eyes will be on that upcoming launch. If all goes to plan, even the newly-expanded space at Harwell may not be enough to contain it.
