With Elon Musk’s SpaceX sit­ting at a US$2 tril­lion mar­ket cap at the time of writ­ing, the space in­dus­try is a big busi­ness with lim­it­less po­ten­tial for growth that could one day in­clude T&T with in­vest­ment and plan­ning.

Re­gard­ing last week’s col­umn en­ti­tled “Can T&T en­ter the space econ­o­my with Mex­i­co’s help?”, my friends at the Mex­i­can em­bassy have sent me a re­sponse wel­com­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of strength­en­ing trade ties be­tween the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors of Mex­i­co and T&T to pro­duce com­po­nents for satel­lites and space­craft. I was ad­vised that Mex­i­co is in fact the world’s fourth largest ex­porter of aero­space prod­ucts ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of Com­merce.

I would like to for­mal­ly thank His Ex­cel­len­cy Víc­tor Hugo Morales Melén­dez for his prompt cor­re­spon­dence and dis­cus­sion on this mat­ter.

An on­line ar­ti­cle from Mex­i­co-now.com has in­di­cat­ed that sev­er­al com­po­nents for SpaceX prod­ucts are man­u­fac­tured in Mex­i­co:

“So far, Mex­i­co has po­si­tioned it­self as a man­u­fac­tur­ing na­tion in the sec­tor. For ex­am­ple, 20 of the com­po­nents for Star­link con­stel­la­tion satel­lites, such as the com­bus­tion cham­bers of SpaceX’s Rap­tor en­gines, are man­u­fac­tured in Mon­ter­rey and Chi­huahua, but none of them bears the ‘Made in Mex­i­co’ seal. “

Per­haps in reimag­in­ing the eco­nom­ic fu­ture of T&T, we should move to­wards high-val­ue aero­space man­u­fac­tur­ing and away from mere­ly be­ing ex­porters of en­er­gy prod­ucts. It is not im­pos­si­ble for part­ner­ships to be forged be­tween Mex­i­can com­pa­nies and our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to be­gin sub­con­tract­ing work from com­pa­nies like SpaceX here in our small is­land. With the Vana­di­um steel plant com­ing on­line soon, the raw ma­te­ri­als would be avail­able to be­gin pro­duc­ing prod­ucts for use in aero­space and space launch­es.

Due to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ment need­ed, T&T would need to be­gin man­u­fac­tur­ing at the low­er end of the val­ue chain; how­ev­er, there is much that can be built here: ground sup­port equip­ment, steel tow­ers and rock­et land­ing pads are with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing reach of T&T.

Keep in mind that T&T fab­ri­cat­ed most of the Ju­niper plat­form, the largest off­shore struc­ture ever fab­ri­cat­ed lo­cal­ly, weigh­ing about 5,200 short tonnes and stand­ing 145 feet to the he­lideck. Up­skilling from oil plat­form work to rock­et launch plat­form work is with­in T&T’s reach.

Mov­ing on to a dis­cus­sion of space pol­i­cy. The Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Space Agency was formed in 2021 and mod­elled as a Caribbean coun­ter­part to the Eu­ro­pean Space Agency. Its ini­tials are ALCE, from the Span­ish Agen­cia Lati­noamer­i­cana y Caribeña del Es­pa­cio.

The ALCE is head­quar­tered in Mex­i­co, and it’s the re­gion­al body co­or­di­nat­ing co­op­er­a­tion on space tech­nol­o­gy re­search and its peace­ful ap­pli­ca­tions for the ben­e­fit of the re­gion, cov­er­ing things like satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, cli­mate change map­ping, and dis­as­ter ob­ser­va­tion and agri­cul­ture.

The mem­bers of the ALCE in­clude, but are not lim­it­ed to: Ar­genti­na, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Mex­i­co, Cu­ba, Haiti, Pana­ma, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Saint Lu­cia, Venezuela, and Be­lize. The ALCE agree­ment has been signed by 21 coun­tries and rat­i­fied by 9.

My re­search seems to show that T&T nev­er signed this treaty but has al­ready ben­e­fit­ed from the work of the ALCE. With­in the frame­work of ALCE, Mex­i­co found­ed and fi­nanced a Geospa­tial Ob­ser­va­tion Cen­tre (GOC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in co­op­er­a­tion with Mex­i­co’s na­tion­al sta­tis­tics/ge­og­ra­phy in­sti­tute.

Giv­en T&T’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties due to be­ing a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state present­ly bat­tling a drought and the ef­fects of cli­mate change, bet­ter ac­cess to satel­lite imag­ing could be im­pact­ful for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

While mem­ber­ship in the ALCE is not nec­es­sary for T&T to col­lab­o­rate fur­ther with Mex­i­co to bring about an aero­space in­dus­try lo­cal­ly, it makes sense. T&T ar­guably lacks the ex­per­tise to de­vel­op a world-class space pol­i­cy on its own, and we can ben­e­fit from the pletho­ra of in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners al­ready en­ter­ing in­to dis­cus­sions with the ALCE. South Ko­rea’s Ko­rea Aero­space Re­search In­sti­tute (KARI) has been named ALCE’s per­ma­nent tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor.

There is al­so a col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ment be­tween KARI and the Mex­i­can Space Agency (AEM) to do a fea­si­bil­i­ty study on rock­et launch pads to al­low Mex­i­co to launch satel­lites from its own ter­ri­to­ry.

Leav­ing aside the pol­i­cy dis­cus­sion to cov­er the physics of rock­et launch­es, there is a se­ri­ous ben­e­fit to launch­ing rock­ets in­to space close to the equa­tor. Launch­ing near the equa­tor adds Earth’s ro­ta­tion­al speed (about 1,670 km/h), sav­ing fu­el and in­creas­ing pay­load. It al­so al­lows di­rect ac­cess to geo­sta­tion­ary or­bits.

The Earth ro­tates from west to east. Rock­ets are of­ten launched to­wards the east to gain some of Earth’s ro­ta­tion­al speed. Coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca that sit clos­er to the Equa­tor are ac­tu­al­ly ide­al lo­ca­tions for launch­ing rock­ets.

There is al­ready a space­port in our re­gion in French Guiana owned by the Eu­ro­pean Space Agency. It is high time that T&T’s gov­ern­ment makes an of­fi­cial space pol­i­cy, and sign­ing on­to the ALCE could be the cor­ner­stone of that pol­i­cy.