"The new space provides an excellent opportunity for Israel"

This is what Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel, who until a few months ago served as the chairman of the Israeli Agency, says at the high-tech Silicon Club meeting held on December 27

"The new space is good news for the world in general and for Israel in particular" says Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel, who served for many years as chairman of the Israel Space Agency.

Prof. Ben Yisrael participated in the "Silicon Club" high-tech managers' forum meeting held on December 27 in Tel Aviv that dealt with the new space.

"The new space is the result of the development of technology that today makes it possible to do things that used to cost a lot and were big and heavy so that only superpowers could do them. Today it is possible to do things with smaller weights, at smaller prices and in smaller groups of people, and this works for the benefit of the space industry in the entire world. In small countries That they have a problem of resources and personnel is doubly good."

"There are many examples of this, Ramon Space builds a computer card that functions in the harsh conditions of space. Stamrad builds an anti-radiation space suit. For such things you don't need heavy infrastructure and huge production lines. Israel built a satellite every three years. If we made an effort we could build a satellite in a year But this requires thousands of workers and production rooms, some of which are clean rooms. It is much easier and better for Israel to operate in the new space."

The technological improvement also brings with it a decrease in costs so that even private companies can enter the field of space, not only governments. I'm not just talking about companies like SpaceX, which is a commercial company but the size of a country, but about smaller things like Genesis.

"We are now celebrating the 50th anniversary of the last landing on the moon in the Apollo program. But think for a moment that a private association in the State of Israel developed a lander that lands on the moon! (Leave for the moment the fact that it crashed due to human error). The entire project from the foundation to the foundations cost 100 million dollars It's a huge amount for private people, but it's an amount that investors and even donations can cover."

"A more extreme example: Israel was the first country in the world to launch into space nano-satellites (cubesats) built in high schools. This is not even a university. The Israeli Space Agency has a plan to build eight satellites (Earth satellites to be built by eight schools throughout the country). The investment For a satellite, including the construction of clean rooms and a radio station for communication in each of the schools, it is 200 thousand dollars per satellite - less than a million shekels when we were children Could we have imagined that the high school would build a satellite? All this is the New Space."

"And of course if we talked about high schools we reach the point that the most important element for the space field in Israel is education. This is in line with our goals in general because our survival in the world is built on an advantage in quality personnel and technology."