Delegates from the space and telecommunication technologies cluster at Skolkovo made a report to the UN on Cosmonauts’ Day
Photo: http://2012over.ru/
On April 12 at the UN headquarters in New York, a symposium was held on the International Day of Human Space Flight.
The Russian Federal Space Agency was represented by a delegation which included the director of development for the space and telecommunication technologies cluster at Skolkovo, Dmitry Paison. He spoke to international experts about some of the challenges of space innovation in Russia.
Excerpt from Presentation:
In such a rapidly changing world as we have today, no space program can exist without major changes. We in Russia have made a significant step towards rebuilding our institutions to work in these new realities. To do this we created the space technology and telecommunications cluster at Skolkovo. The plan is to build a large research center and industrial park on the outskirts of Moscow.
I would like to share my observations with you on how to introduce innovations into conservative think tanks and large corporations whose creation dates back to the 50’s and 60’s.
We at Skolkovo have daily encounter with innovators, and our task is to bring their developments "down to earth" and to realize the commercial side of these projects. To do this, we have special departments and services.
The conclusion that we have come to is the fact that there are two types of innovative projects that require our assistance to refine them.
The first type is companies whose projects are focused on bringing a single useful product or service to the market. The second is products that significantly improve these markets, those things that are not well developed in the field of space activities. However, they all have, as we do, one main goal - to make life here on Earth better.
At different times, there was a need for one or the other type of company. Today, we cannot do without either of them.
I recall that one of the fathers of Russian space exploration, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, dreamed about the possibilities of human to travel into space. In the 60 ‘s, cosmonauts carried out these dreams in reality. And today we dream of space technologies being available to ordinary citizens, from the use of satellites to orbital flights.
Therefore, the work of Skolkovo aims to support real business space projects that are able to change the market. Our assistance includes grants for projects that are in one way or another related to the market for space technologies. A good example is the project to produce a "smart" motorcycle helmet with a built-in navigation system.
In addition, the list of interesting developments includes conceptual projects for small satellite platforms and other important developments that have made it into the list of priority projects of the Russian space industry.
For example, we have a group of scientists working on the creation of new kinds of liquid fuel. Other vendors offer solutions for monitoring and potentially knocking space junk out of orbit. We hope that these projects will be fully implemented by private companies. In this way we may be able to fully open up the potential of public-private partnerships.
Independent of which institute, segment of the market or country to which we belong, we all have in common the fact that we live on the same planet, and also the fact that we can learn lessons from space that will have practical applications for us all.
United Nations, New York, 2012