After Britain upped its European Space Agency (ESA) contribution by 25 percent, the United Kingdom's growing space industry started drawing up a revitalized economic development strategy to be published later this year, but business is divided as to whether the U.K.'s space future is in technology or services. "From the U.K.'s point of view we need to have a healthy upstream because that allows us to create new business opportunities for the downstream," Sir Martin Sweeting, founder and chief executive of Surrey Satellite Technology, told SpaceNews. Sweeting's view is that the so-called downstream space-based service providers will benefit from new technologies created by upstream technology developers like Surrey.
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