Gilmour Space Technologies General Counsel James Minchinton thinks “space is awesome” but has to stay grounded during work hours.
A qualified scientist and lecturer in space law at the University of Adelaide, James shared his passion and excitement for the industry and profession at today’s Queensland Law Society Inhouse Counsel Breakfast at Law Society House.
His Gold Coast-based employer, Gilmour Space Technologies, is a launch services company that is developing new capabilities for satellites and providing launch vehicles.
Bowen is the location for the launch facility.
Earlier this year, the company received approval for the country’s first orbital launch facility in Bowen, North Queensland, and it hopes to launch Australia’s first designed and built, orbital launch rocket this year.
The rocket will be 23m long and two metres wide, and at launch it will weigh more than 37,000kg (most of that is fuel). Its purpose is to take payloads of between 100-300km into low Earth orbit, so about “300-500km straight up”.
“The intention is to build bigger rockets in future which will take larger payloads to higher orbits,” James said, as he referred to actual photos in the room used as a backdrop.
“We are well beyond the stage of artist impressions now. The rocket is there, it’s ready to go. We completed a wet test recently, which is where the rocket is fully fuelled to make sure everything works.”
The company is waiting for “one last approval” from the Federal Government before a launch date can be confirmed.
“But we are hopeful, and we have been hopeful for a while, and you need a lot of hope in this industry as well, I think that we will get that in the coming weeks,” James said.
“Lawyer’s disclaimer of course around that,” he joked. “Hopefully we are able make our first launch before the end of this year. It will be fantastic.”
The Brisbane breakfast was livestreamed.
So what does a space lawyer spend their time doing? James says some focus on academia looking at international space law treaties, focusing on the “big three” – space debris, space traffic management and space mining.
Another category of space lawyer is the government policy solicitor, who is advising on policies, drafting legislation and formulating what governments want to do in space.
Then there are the in-house or commercial lawyers, such as James, advising on commercial issues in the space sector as they arise.
“I like to conceptualise what Gilmour Space does and try to break it down,” he explained. “Space is awesome. It is fantastic but as a lawyer you need to keep your feet on the ground a little bit and think about how it actually works.”
He said there were a few different aspects to his in-house work with Gilmour being responsible for manufacturing, being a “transport company” and “services company” – launching other people’s satellites.
In “typical Australian fashion”, James likes to explain what his work it’s not rather than what it is.
“Unfortunately I’m not jetting off to the United Nations to negotiate treaties every second day as wonderful at that would be and as fun as that might be,” he said.
“I’m not writing legislation about how humanity is going to interact with each other on the moon, again that would be fascinating – it’s bigger picture stuff. Certainly I have interest in it but it’s not the kind of stuff I do on a day-to-day basis unfortunately.
“Certainly a large proportion of what I do inhouse is what every in-house lawyer does – the leases, the employment issues, the governance issues, and procurement issues. There is no escaping that for a space company.”
A launch is hoped for this year.
But his job does have a “space flavour” – drafting contracts; ensuring highly specialised kit and equipment meets tight specifications for the rocket; and making sure plant does too, especially at the launch site; and overseeing import and export dealings with countries all over the world.
“Some of these countries have tight import/export regimes. So navigating your way through that can be quite complex and interesting, I would say fun that’s for sure.
“There is a dual use for a lot of stuff used in the space industry, in some way a rocket looks pretty similar to a missile.
“A lot of the technology is the same, so there is a wariness around supply of some of these pieces of equipment and material from some nations. They don’t want it getting into the wrong hands, hence why we have these complicated trade regimes.”
Outside of the space flavour, there is “mercifully – the pure space stuff at the end of it and it makes everything else worthwhile, and makes all the other stuff endurable when you got all this really exciting stuff at the end of the day”.
“This is the stuff like getting the particular approvals that you need to be able to carry out the launch as you might imagine you just can’t build a rocket and launch it from your back yard,” he said.
James has years of experience getting approvals through government agencies, some of which are “risk averse”.
“It’s a new industry; there’s a lot of nervousness about it; we have high level of confidence about it and government of course looks at things through a very different lens,” he said.
“So navigating those safety issues and also some of those geopolitical and foreign affairs issues as well. If we were to launch over one of our neighbouring countries, how will they feel about it, how will it impact on the foreign affairs of Australia.”
So James has three pieces of advice for in-house counsel from his toolkit. The first is to know your industry, know the history (micro and macro) and know the law. For this space buff, his sphere has an interesting Cold War history with conflicting ideologies, international treaties and domestic law.
The second is to be a translator with your business. “In a business like Gilmour Space, there are literal rocket scientists who work there and they will speak in a technical way. You’ve got to interrogate them and translate that issue into a legal framework that you can then analyse and apply.”
Finally, James recognises there’s a lot of uncertainty in law – especially in the new area of space law with no formal regime in Australia and some aspirational statements in treaties such as “the benefit for all mankind”.
“You have to come back to basics as you do with every approach to a legal problem,” he advised. ‘Try to identify the law as best you can. You make the evaluation – ‘how certain can I be’. You’ve got to know when you reach that limit. There’s no point spinning the wheels and trying to find more information that just doesn’t exist.”
Gold Coast lawyers watched the address.
And lawyers from the Gold Coast and Townsville listened to that advice via the livestream, as well as the Brisbane audience.
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