Apparently association with Horizon Europe is ‘very close’, but as our cosmologists would point out this just depends on what you are comparing it to.  A pundit at Research Professional quipped “In the great expanse of the universe, Saturn is “very close” to Earth, but it’s not somewhere you are going to get to by Wednesday week.” So whilst we wait for Freeman et al. to sort themselves out we can busy ourselves looking at the Pioneer programme, and also very apposite to the space metaphor, the idea of ‘Moonshots’.

Pioneer (a.k.a. Plan B) looks quite sensible and comes with a promise of ~£10Bn funding. It has strands of activity for Talent, Innovation, Global collaboration and Infrastructure and on paper at least, looks like a reasonable alternative to association, although not without its critics. There’s lots of detail to fill in, and time will tell whether or not this will be a rich vein for us to tap.  Nevertheless, UKRI and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are boldly going (sorry) into new territory, as on 19 June they published the Moonshots call, asking for “bold, ambitious, and transformative ideas for moonshots across the research and innovation landscape”. Ideas succeeding in this call will be funded by the aforementioned Pioneer programme.

UKRI are keen to point out that Moonshots is not a bidding process for funding, rather it is an ideas generation process via community engagement.  

The first stage of this process is for community members to submit your idea for a moonshot. Ideas can be submitted by individuals or an individual representing an organisation, community or consortium. Moonshots should be submitted before 10 July 2023. The second stage will be internal filtering by UKRI to create a short list and in the third stage shortlisted moonshots along with their presenters will be invited to work with UKRI and DSIT. This includes convening consortia, if not established already, to ensure representation across research, large and small business and industry communities, to work up the moonshot idea into a more fully developed proposition.  

You can see the questions from the moonshot form here – and there is no internal constraint on individuals making a submission, other than you’ll need to have an idea as to how you would proceed with the idea, and some time in the future would need to go through normal channels for bidding.

So a lot to go and and not much time for a moonshot idea. However, UKRI have reassured the community that not participating in this stage doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be able to apply for funding when and if funding is available.