The UK Space Agency has been assured it still matters. Officials pat it on the head, tell it the name is staying, and then gently slide it into DSIT’s filing cabinet. On paper this is a partnership. In practice it is a custody transfer with visiting rights. Whitehall calls it “efficiency,” which is the civil service equivalent of saying “don’t ask questions.”

The grand language about cutting duplication is meant to distract from the obvious. If duplication really was the problem, half of Whitehall would already be rubble. What’s actually happening is a polite suffocation. Ministers want the joystick. Scientists and engineers get to watch and clap.

Industry has been handed the chalk to scribble its own rules. Sixty bright ideas from companies that plan to cash the cheques they are writing. Astroscale, ClearSpace and D-Orbit are cast as pioneers, but it looks more like lobbyists drafting policy in company letterhead. The “sandbox” is the crown jewel here, a safe space where orbital demolition derbies can be simulated with the comfort of knowing government will call it innovation rather than a liability risk.

The Regulatory Innovation Office appears on cue, waving a banner about unlocking progress. It is less an office and more a cheerleading squad with a desk. Its job is to smile at every shiny prototype and declare barriers removed. The spin is that Britain will own a chunk of the trillion-dollar orbital economy. The translation is that rules are being written by the same people standing to profit from them, and the referees are thrilled to be included.

Reassurances come like a drip feed. No job cuts. No lost contracts. No sudden changes. These lines are delivered with the same energy as “nothing to see here” at the scene of a fire. Everyone knows change is coming, just not yet, and certainly not announced in a press release.

Quotes from ministers and executives are full of golden threads, firm foundations and bright futures. None of it hides the fact that the agency’s independence has been shrink-wrapped. The UK Space Agency becomes a brand logo plastered on work supervised elsewhere. The officials stay polite about it, but the control has shifted.

So here it is, Britain’s space future. A sandbox built by industry, supervised by regulators desperate to be liked, wrapped in government messaging about agility.