We spent five minutes with co-directors, Chris Rose and Alex Baker, who set up parent company SentIntoSpace in 2011 and Ascension Flights in 2016. As seen on TV – their services have featured on Dragons’ Den and The Last Leg.
We were inspired to start our business by …
Alex: A National Geographic competition to capture nature from a ‘unique perspective’. We were both students at the time and couldn’t afford the best in the camera world, so we decided to buy the cheapest we could and send it as high above the Earth as possible. Next steps were to figure out how to achieve such a feat and how to retrieve the payload afterwards. The results were breath-taking and The University of Sheffield promoted the flight leading us to be overwhelmed with enquiries. Since the beginning of the company we have always had it in our sights to scatter ashes in Space, something we felt was a moving tribute to a life well-lived. Fundamentally, we are all stardust, so this really felt like a fitting tribute to those of us who have lived through the prologue to the space age.
My favourite thing about running our businesses is …
Chris: The team we have been able to put together is great, the work we get to do is fascinating and that’s really reflected in how our team approach their work. Being able to offer our services is also a huge high – it’s a great feeling giving someone a memory they can treasure of somebody they have lost.
We are particularly proud of our ambitious nature. Our engineers never like to say “it can’t be done” to a client. There’s nothing more satisfying than pulling off something once considered impossible.
The three words that best describe our businesses are …
Unique
Bold
Ambitious
Sheffield is a great place to start a business because …
Chris: Despite being a big city, Sheffield has the closeness and spirit of a large town.
Sheffield is developing at a rate of knots and as a result there are a lot of organisations that are focused on helping business’ advance to keep this momentum going.
Local government wants new businesses to do well and this is reflected in varied and widespread funding opportunities, something we are very keen to further investigate to progress our research testing work.
More specific to us as a business, we can get from our city centre office to open country for a balloon launch in no time at all. That’s also part of the reason so many graduates stay in Sheffield.
Sheffield is a great place to grow a business because …
Alex: We both studied here, and we’re not alone in having come here for university and fallen in love with the place. A business is its people, and Sheffield is great for people.
The best advice we ever got was …
Chris: “Do not get comfortable in the assumption that you are currently receiving the best deal, furthermore never assume that people have your best interests at heart”. I know this sounds pretty negative but I don’t mean it to! The message really is not to be lazy in assuming that the arrangement you have on a particular aspect of your business is perpetually good. Being proactive in looking to better this will very often be worth the effort.
The worst advice we ever got was …
Alex: “Stick to your original goals/business plan”. Objectives and perspectives change, it’s probably unhealthy to try and stubbornly stick to all your original business goals.
The Sheffield organisations that have supported us and our businesses include …
Chris: The University of Sheffield, first and foremost, for giving us the publicity that allowed us to turn a fun project into a business.
There’s a huge pool of graduate potential in Sheffield and schemes like RISE gave us – having never had to manage the hiring process before – access to this potential.
Advisor and friend Robin Tones from RTC North is a great example of freely available business advice we have very much valued.
The main challenges facing our industry/sector are …
Alex: Awareness is definitely up there – it seems like a very unique, niche thing on the surface, but what we can offer is affordable access to Space. That’s quite exciting we think! Beyond what we already offer, there’s immense scope for research and testing and this is our next big project. There are several major satellite tech companies in the UK for example – it’s just a matter of getting what we are able to do in front of them.
In 5 years’ time we expect our businesses to …
Alex: Beside seeing a general awareness within the funeral industry that scattering ashes in space is both possible and affordable, we’d like to see SentIntoSpace as an established service provider for satellite technology testing and Near Space equipment.
Chris: Be offering STEM-based, hands-on learning projects in all primary schools within the UK.
