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Nova Scotia to Build Space Tourist Launchpad
Identity Missing writes "Lockheed Martin is planning on building a commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia Canada. The details are a bit shaky, but apparently the project is serious enough to attract 45 million dollars from the Federal government. The launch pad will specifically be built in Cape Breton, a mostly rural island characterized by low employment, thick colloquial accents, and kitchen fiddle parties. A PDF is available with pictures and a description of the planned orbital glider, the 'Silver Dart,' somewhat lacking the aesthetics of the X Prize winner."
I can't help feeling as if I have in some way been impugned by this article.
It won't actually have space vehicles, but yes, it is a spaceport ;-)
Ugh. Sounds like Premier Peckford's pickle palace all over again. The story of the Maritimes is the story of one failed government 'investment' scheme after another. Let's just admit that now that all the fish have been vacuumed up the economy simply can't support the number of people who live there, and leave it at that. Let economic migration deal with the problem.
I hope they serve Alexander Keith's on those space flights!
My first thought:
Zero-G Riverdance
Why do they still call it the Federal government? I don't read an article and forget if it's totalitarian or democratic...
is it just me, or does the image show 8 passengers and no pilot?
sure, fly it remotely to save costs, i know...but if the system was that good, why not put it into regular commercial aviation?
reminds me of those rural towns building landing strips for ufo's. Scrape off some land, put up a few signs, and wait for the tourists to come into town to spend money.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
They have a fried chicken restaurant chain there called "Lick-a-Chick". Seriously.
Isn't that an awful high latitude to try to launch from?
Well Nova Scotia isn't very close to the equator (where spaceports belong), but maybe the province will be expanding someday soon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_and_Caicos_Islands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_Canadian_provinces_and_territories
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Don't know about the Monopoly money equivalent, but $45 M CDN is about $46.8 M USD right now.
Things have changed a little.
hey yankee dickwad.. own money is worth more than yours today! $1.04
The last time I drove around Cape Breton - it was early October and the colors finally made me understand the red maple leaf on the flag - it was a lovely afternoon. We pitched a small campsite in a place with a name something like "Killmychickencluck," and had a lovely evening. We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a bull moose roaming around the camp, and barely fell back asleep. When we woke up again, there was a roughly 2-inch layer of spikey frost on everything. It was spectacular. We tried to talk to the locals about it, but We're Not From Around There, and they didn't take to us very well, I'm afraid. But we were able to gather that the weather just gets more interesting from then until, say, May. Wouldn't it make more sense to park this sort of thing somewhere with a bit more year-round opportunity for doing business, climate-wise? It's a bit of a drive down to Halifax, but there was a lovely Italian place for dinner, and a Holiday Inn with a clean pool. And, men in kilts working the tourist stops. But they had entirely the wrong accent for that, thus producing a sort of Highland Dissonance Syndrome that counteracted all tourist spending urges. Perhaps adding rocket ships to the mix will fix that.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The Silver Dart name is intended to ride on the coat-tails of the original Silver Dart, which also flew out of Nova Scotia. The Canadian Arrow company name also seems to be intended to ride on the coat-tails of the Avro Arrow. So they are trying to associate themselves with the two most famous aircraft in Canadian history, despite having nothing to do with either. And they seem to have overlooked the fact that both of these famous aircraft met ignominious ends, which can't be good for luck.
...welcome our mostly rural, kitchen fiddling, space tourist overlords!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
A similar venture was funded in my home state in 2001; it just got it's NASA funding pulled without a single martini served in orbit, far's I can tell. You'd think it was independent contractors with the lowest bid that built the shuttle, sheesh...
The high latitude of Nova Scotia makes it more costly to launch for an equatorial orbit. Getting to GEO or lower-latitude LEO orbit would require more fuel. There's a reason why Arianes launch from French Guiana and not Europe.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Cape Breton is one of the southernmost parts of Canada.
There are clear physical advantages to building spaceports (or any space launch pads) close to the equator, for reasons other than weather. Gravity is lowest at the equator, due to two reasons: one being Earth an oblate shape and thus an equatorial point is furthest from core and thus has least gravity, the other being the centrifugal spin of the Earth which is strongest at the equator. Put together, this accounts for about 2% less weight, which does not seem much, but does make a difference.
If you have noticed, both the USA and USSR chose to build their spaceports as south as possible. The most used USA launch spot is in Florida, and in the USSR the Bainokur cosmodrome is located in Kazakhstan, which is not even a part of Russia anymore, but clearly the benefits gotta outweigh the logistical and political diffculties.
Back on topic of this particular case, once the choice of the country (Canada) has been made, Nova Scotia would seem like a good solution due to the reasons outlined above. The question comes, why Canada? LM is a US company, has huge ties to the defense industry, lots of political connections, and the US in general is more business-friendly than Canada. I find it very hard to believe LM would get out of Canada (be it government, commerce, industry ties, or simply geographical settings) anything they couldn't get in the US. Any ideas?
Maybe that reference is a tad too regional for
I can see some people blasting off all the way to the bank
Yet another post illustrating the need for a "Dumbass" moderation choice.
Proverbs 21:19
" how much is that in Canadian monopoly money? Ha ha, canucks, we love you miserable bastards, eh "
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=292a762e-5b3e-4909-9ea3-ca664b774391&k=97109
"Loonie soars to new 30-year high
Eric Beauchesne, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, May 26, 2007
OTTAWA -- The loonie soared to a new 30-year high of nearly 93 cents US Friday and toward what one Canadian bank is saying will be parity with the ailing U.S. greenback within two years.
The dollar, after hitting a high of 92.8 cents US, closed Friday at 92.64 cents US, its highest closing level since 1977."
"The strength of the Canadian dollar can no longer be laid solely to weakness of the greenback," Gignac said. "The loonie has appreciated against almost all currencies."
Now be nice or well hook the Chinese on Timbits and buy the US debt and turn your country into an amusement park. Eh.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Don't let the coastline fool you, this ain't Florida. The northern atlantic is a cold, icy, foggy place most of the year (remember Titanic). I certainly hope you don't need good weather to launch rockets.
boxlight
Actually, there have been talks for the Caribbean nation of Turks And Caicos to join Canada.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
It doesn't matter what it's worth, it's still play money.
I know this is OffT, but does this mean that my 2 cents is worth less now or worthless as always?
Anywho, back on, LM may be choosing that area for logistical means. Not just the fact it will take more fuel to launch from there.
import system.cool.Sig;
I's the by that builds the boat.... oh wait...
Nova Scotia to Build Space Tourist Launchpad
Launching space tourists may not be a bad idea. Maybe they can build one for rockets too !
Comparing http://www.planetspace.org/pdf/PressRelease121505.pdf2005 to http://www.planetspace.org/pdf/PressRelease020107.pdf2007 we see that they can't even decide how many V2 engines it'll take to lift the sucker. Or maybe they decided that they could find skinnier astronauts on CBI.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Stupid Feds. Put my tax dollars into libraries, bike paths and food inspection agents who are trained to say "No" to hormone laden milk and GMO crops. Thank you.
-FL
The 'Silver Dart' name plays homage to Canada's first plane.
Frankly, I think they'd do better with some sort of (much less expensive and land-intensive) tie-in to Bell's early high-speed hydroplaning watercraft, the HD-4.
Whatever they do, it sounds like it will end up in the dictionary under "boondoggle."
I mean, using a slingshot or whatever to launch tourists into space. Ouch. I'd want a ship of some sort.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
That launch site is more convenient to the East Coast US than Spaceport New Mexico or Mojave. It is also well-placed for northern European clients. They should market a 2 week package, 3 days to unwind in Iceland, a week of training and fun in Cape Breton, your suborbital flight, and a couple days to relax afterwards.
It's pretty high inclination which could grow into accessing the rumored 61 degree orbit of the Bigelow complex.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Dude, where you from? Calgary? I bet you had one of those "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark" bumper stickers when Trudeau realized that since Canada exports more oil than we consume, we could entirely free ourselves from the world price on oil.
It's only in the last 30 years that "now that all the fish have been vacuumed up the economy simply can't support the number of people who live there" became the dominant way of looking at the Atlantic region.
You know that before Confederation, NS was the most prosperous place in Canada? Even up into the 50's or 60's NS had a strong manufacturing base, which is the foundation of a strong economy.
The real problem is that governments in NS (and to a lesser extend federal governments) have not really been focused on (or even aware of) anything except primary and tertiary industries. Sorry, but tertiary jobs don't cut it unless you have a population density more like southern Ontario's. And primary industries are getting squeezed by middlemen everywhere, in every industry.
Never mind that politicians in NS have traditionally been willing to sell their children (or at least constituents) to anybody promising them a campaign contribution and 50 jobs in their riding.
For example, take sable island oil and gas. How much of that is being _refined_ in NS? Oh yeah, zero. If the government at the time had had any forsight (or, balls for that matter) they would've struck a deal stating "You wanna drill for oil and gas here? Sure. But you're gonna _refine_ X % of it here.", like Alberta's done from day one.
You can't build a strong economy on natural resources if you harvest/mine/drill for them in place A, ship the raw materials to place B, and then sell the finished products in place A.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The dollar, after hitting a high of 92.8 cents US, closed Friday at 92.64 cents US, its highest closing level since 1977."
:-P
Umm, the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American. $1.034 with a quick google search here. Guess monopoly money isn't so bad after all
Who built their Cosmodrome 3 degrees further North in Baikonur.
Canaveral was a logical space port choice for two reasons. The built in kinetic energy of an object on the earths surface is due to its tangential velocity WRT the earths CG. That decreases as cos(latitude) when you move from equator to pole. As far south in the continental us as you can find a chunk of govt-owned eastern shore is ideal because at 28 north latitude, it has 88% of the KE of an object launched from equator, providing you pitch it into an eastward revolving orbit. That second reason? Since you have to tilt east, your boost trajectory goes safely over unpopulated ocean. Nova Scotia, at an average latitude of 45n only has 70% of the maximum possible KE...you need more fuel to orbit an equal weight of payload than they do in FL. NS only has the shore going for it. Did someone sell the Province the brooklyn bridge too?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
That PDF is very old. Did anyone notice the date - 15 December 2005?
:). Or at least get some better graphics together.
Wonder if they have made any progress since then
Born and raised here. Yes. Really.
#1. It's not that foggy, in fact it's pretty nice. As well, our climate seems to be shifting closer to what they have in BC, but without the rain, at least for 10 months out of the year.
#2. Cape Breton is indeed beautiful. Tourists coming to go into space could see what they're leaving behind. I don't believe it's a unique beauty..the coast of California (especially Big Sur) feels very similar to me, but the combination is interesting.
#3. Unemployment isn't that high. It USED to be, after the natural resource industries collapsed (like they all do), but the population levels have evened out, and it's a pretty big destination for call centers these days. Why? #4.
#4. Friendly, intelligent (if not college educated) people. You could man such a spaceport with people from the area, not have to pay outlandish wages and still have a good experience for the tourists.
oh yea you canofyuck, your damn quarter still won't work in our soda machines.
LAHEY: "I'm Jim Lahey, Trailer Park-Spaceport Supervisor, and this is Randy, the Associate Trailer Park-Spaceport Supervisor. Have a drink while I show you around--hey, Randy! Get Ricky away from that rocket!"
RICKY: "F*** you, Lahey! I'm goin' to the Informational Smace Station!"
JULIAN: "D**m it, Rick, how are we gonna sell all this dope if you're in space?"
BUBBLES: "Julian! You promised I'd be the first one to go up in the rocket. What the f*** is Ricky doing with my space man suit?!?"
You better not be impugning the dignity of our REAL currency.
Any spacecraft that resembles a Star Destroyer can't be all bad.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It'd be a Nova Scotian provincial government...
At one point (I can't find a link, unfortunately) NS actually had a _toilet seat_ scandal... Kickback/bribery style dirty deal to install mechanized toilet seats that automatically dispense seat covers, in all NS government offices.
They ended up being sold at auction, some people bought them as collector's items.
There was even a case of a deputy minister, Michael Zareski, who was about to blow the whistle on all of John Buchanan's crooked dealings. Buchanan's cronies had him shipped off to Ontario and, wait for it, involuntarily committed.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Back on topic of this particular case, once the choice of the country (Canada) has been made, Nova Scotia would seem like a good solution due to the reasons outlined above.
Why not BC or Alberta? Lots of open space, and the ground altitude gives you a 5000 or more feet of head start. Winter time weather is more predictable and less snow on the east side of the Rockies. Geologically stable. Workers there are used to big projects and have a much larger population base.
But it is Canadian government, it does not have to make sense.
and the US in general is more business-friendly than Canada.
Can't argue that. Just wait until the locals put a tax on it.
Any ideas?
Yep. Government in Canada feels it is OK to get into business, fund it, bribe it...for example, CBC, the national broadcast company is subsidized and operated by the government.
Working the most embarassingly dead-end jobs.
My last job in Halifax (before I moved to Vancouver) I was working as a line cook. One of our other cooks had an Electrical Engineering degree. One of our waiters had an architecture degree.
A friend of mine used to say "I think I'm the only bartender in town without a master's degree..."
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Build it and they will come. If we build this spaceport here, then people will flock from all over the world to Cape Breton, bringing their cash, and this area will flourish and prosper.
Two words.
Mirabel airport.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Yes, that'll certainly help the economy of the maritimes. are you kidding?
I read this on the CBC earlier today. I had a neighbour from Cape Breton, Ken. One of the best I ever had. When I saw the headline on CBC, it said "Cape Breton", but the headline here on Slashdot says "Nova Scotia".
This reminded me when Ken always insisted that Cape Breton is not the same as Nova Scotia, despite being the same province. Maybe regional independence, or identity.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
This gives "commercial spaceport" a bad name.
This is why governments waste money, lobbying. No open process, just plunk down the money.
This is for planetspace, who "has indicated that one of its goals is to send 2,000 tourists into space within the next five years"
We are talking about a company that appears to be run by marketing people. Witness the full mockup of their rocket and the astronaut training facility.
In contrast to Scaled, Armadillo, Blue Origin etc, I don't think I've seen a single launch of any kind from them. PlanetSpace does tell us they are busy patenting all sorts of stuff.
This is one of the stupidist ideas I've heard of. I spent the first half of my life in Cape Breton, and I can tell you that it is the jewel of eastern Canada. Would you put a spaceport in Cape Cod? How about Cape May, N.J.? Cape Breton has scenic beauty and tourism potential that is unrivaled. The Bras d'or Lakes, the Cabot Trail, the Fortress of Louisbourg are world class destinations. The last thing I want is astronaut parts raining down on the Mira River.
The whole thing sounds a little too much like other regions attempting to attract attention through unwarranted space programs. I hope Nova Scotia will be more successful than Zaire.
They also established a recording studio at the University of Cape Breton to record and preserve the local music.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I'm given her all she's got Cap'n ...
What?
A couple of years ago, the Canadian dollar was worth less than 80 cents US. It's now worth more than a greenback. It's gone from $0.60 to $1.034, and there are some predictions that we could see it go to $2.00 within the next decade if the US doesn't get a grip on its deficit, and Canada continues to reduce its deficit and debt.
Dildo, Newfoundland - its not "the size of a small town" - it IS a small town.
When it comes to funny names, it beats St. Louis du Ha!Ha!, Quebec (yes, the exclamation points are part of the name), Flin Flon, Manitoba, or Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,
"Where you from?"
"Dildo."
"Who you calling a dildo, dickhead?"
I'm all for launching terrorists into space.
OHH, it says "tourists". Nevermind, I somehow read the title wrongly.
I used to have a good sig...
I'm an EE who grew up dreaming about spacecraft, and I'd love to move to NS if there was a good job waiting for me there. Wonderful place. Much nicer than Houston, for example.
Is linking to a site that contains the word "Lubritorium" safe for work?