Stars in our eyes: Why we’re excited about the Newquay Spaceport Announcement

Note: This post was written by Caitlin Gould, our Business Development Director

This week I will be hanging out with the awesome Spaceport Cornwall team at their stand at Farnborough Airshow and today they are expected to make a very exciting announcement. After years of work, Spaceport Cornwall is announcing a partnership with Virgin Orbit to make Cornwall the home for horizontal satellite launches within the UK. This also means a Cornwall based location for Virgin Orbit, bringing jobs and opportunity to Cornwall and contributing to the larger strategic plan to create a £1 billion Kernow space economy. We’ve talked in the past about why space is an exciting opportunity for Cornwall but we haven’t said much about what this means for Bluefruit.

As embedded software specialists with previous experience of working as suppliers for aerospace companies like Airbus and Helitune, the continued investment and expansion of the aerospace sector in our backyard represents an opportunity to be a part of the larger southwest aerospace supply chain. Being based only 30 minutes from the new Spaceport base at Newquay and 20 minutes from Goonhilly Earth Station, Bluefruit are perfectly positioned to work with new aerospace businesses looking to set up a base in Cornwall who need software expertise. For Bluefruit this represents a real opportunity to continue to grow in a very exciting and fast moving sector.

But it’s bigger than that. For the past 6 years we’ve been working hard within the local Cornish community to help nurture and grow the Cornwall software sector, inspiring students to not only consider a career in tech, but to get to learn hands on through programs like Mission to Mars, expertly delivered by the Software Cornwall team. We’ve tried hard to show students that they can work in this space and that the tech sector in Cornwall represents real job opportunities for them without having to move away from the family and lifestyle they love. With the addition of space tech as a potential career opportunity, the possibilities for the next generation of Cornwall engineers just got a bit more exciting.
We will be sharing live tweets and posts from the event on Twitter and Facebook this week, so keep an eye out for more news.

Head to their website for all things Spaceport Cornwall.