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

"There are many examples of this, Ramon Spice builds a computer card that functions in the harsh conditions of space. Stamrad is building 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 tried, we could build a satellite in a year, but that 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 field."

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 Apollo moon landing. But think for a moment about the fact that a private association in the State of Israel developed a lander that lands on the moon! (Leave for the moment that she crashed due to human error). The entire project from the foundation to the tefahot cost 100 million dollars. It's a huge amount for private individuals, 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. It is not even a university. The Israeli Space Agency has a plan to build eight satellites (earth satellites to be built by eight schools across the country). The investment for the satellite, including the construction of clean rooms and a radio station for communication in each of the schools, is $200 per satellite - less than a million shekels. When we were kids, could we have imagined that high school would build a satellite? All this is the New Spice."

"And of course, if we talked about high schools, we get to 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."