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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."
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.
polar orbits would be dumb for space tourism... space tourism implies regular occurring flights, in order to maximize profit you'd want to make the orbits as 'cheap' velocity wise as possible by using as much of the earths' rotation as possible. Lower latitudes make this possible.
Cape Breton's latitude is roughly the same as Baiknour's, which was the main reason why it was chosen.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.