Houston, Texas, seemed like the perfect place to talk about outer space. Space City, after all, is home to mission control at NASA's Johnson Space Center, and has been the central point for decades of space exploration. But this was an industrial process control event—a largely terrestrial endeavor—so what was there to discuss about “out there"? Turns out, plenty.
Space Day at Yokogawa’s YNOW 2024 users’ conference piqued the interest of process control engineers and executives eager for collaborative opportunities. There’s opportunity and incentive for the process and space industries to learn from each other. Remember, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Spock would be proud.
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Process control conferences these days tend to focus on autonomous operations. Space is the ultimate use case for autonomous technologies. “Space is the pinnacle of remote operations. Everything we talk about in terms of making things secure, keeping workers safe, autonomous operations is applicable to space,” said Eugene Spiropoulos, senior technology strategist at Yokogawa, during a lively panel on IT/OT technology in space.
However, he and fellow panelists pointed out the convergence of space tech and industrial controls is bidirectional. Andrea Course, digital Innovation program manager at Shell, flipped the discussion when she asked, “What can we learn in space that we can use here on Earth"?
"There’s opportunity and incentive for the process and space industries to learn from each other."
While the resulting autonomy and efficiency should be enough to make business leaders salivate, engineers are aware that mirroring the two types of technologies will take some work. For it to happen, there must be more investment in intelligent devices and automation in the process industries. The biggest challenge of adapting space tech for use on Earth is that products are built specifically for the demands of space. “So you have to get creative,” said Wogbe Ofari, founder and chief strategist at WRX Companies.
Engineers are problem solvers, and just as they once cracked the codes to get men to the moon 55 years ago, adopting technology built specifically for the demands of space and converting them for a refinery, deepwater drilling, or a chemical processing plant is well within our reach.
So maybe it’s time to reach from the stars.
