The UK’s space architecture is under constant threat, but Thomas Santini might just be the in-space champion his country needs.
As the cofounder of Lodestar Space, Santini is building in-space, bodyguard-like technology to protect and defend UK and Western defense assets in orbit.
Mission focused: Santini wasn’t always on the entrepreneur’s path. As a student, he was a member of the combined cadet leadership force; that’s a school-based Royal Air Force club, of sorts.
In his teens, Santini won an academic scholarship to begin practicing for his private pilot’s license, placing him on the path to potentially become an RAF pilot one day.
But the world had different plans.
“The entrepreneurship world was calling, essentially. I had that itch, and I said, ‘You know what? I can always fall back on becoming a pilot,’ which is a crazy thing to say,” Santini told Payload.
He went on to get degrees in engineering and entrepreneurship, and later became a founder in residence at Entrepreneur First, a UK startup incubator program, where the idea for Lodestar was born.
Bearing the lode: While the space sector has a long history of dual-use technologies, Santini said Lodestar is unique in its defense-first approach.
“We founded Lodestar around this blue-sky idea of being able to do large construction in orbit,” Santini said. “We’ve just quickly realized…the defense use case is far more pressing.”
Santini explained that the nature of space warfare is changing so rapidly that typical engineering timelines are often too slow to keep pace. He’s building Lodestar at a rapid pace to help the UK maintain its edge.
To achieve his mission, Santini has adopted an approach of open transparency and collaboration—where he feels comfortable leaning on mentors, as well as hiring smart engineers he can learn from.
As the leader of a team of “incredibly young, plucky Brits,” Santini is confident that his singular focus will keep space accessible through the rising geopolitical tensions in orbit. Once space is safe, he can switch back over to his blue-sky thinking.
