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Scotland Could Become Home To Britain's First Spaceport
An anonymous reader writes Scotland could take a giant leap for mankind by becoming the home of Britain's first spaceport. UK Government ministers will announce on Tuesday eight potential sites for a base for sending rockets and tourists into orbit. RAF bases at Kinloss and Leuchars are believed to be among contenders for the spaceport, which would open in 2018 and be Britain's answer to Cape Canaveral. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said: "I am delighted that the government is pushing forward with its ambitious plans to open a spaceport in the UK by 2018. Spaceports will be key to us opening up the final frontier of commercial space travel. Scotland has a proud association with space exploration. We celebrated Neil Armstrong's Scottish ancestry when he became the first man on the Moon and only last week an amazing Scottish company was responsible for building the UK Space Agency's first satellite. The UK space industry is one of our great success stories and I am sure there will be a role for Scotland to play in the future."
Don't they try putting launching sites further south.
1. They are warmer and you don't need to de-ice your craft.
2. Uses less fuel as the earth is spinning faster
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
We'll give you SPACESHIPS if you stay! (promise)
Most of the commercial launches want equatorial orbits, and for that you want to launch as near to the equator as possible. As far as polar orbits for research satellites are concerned there is already the Kiruna site, which is fully equipped and at a better location for monitoring polar orbits. Polar orbits for secret missions? Countries involved in this will want to launch from their own turf. And space tourism? Does not exist yet.
Cynically I expect that this won't happen by 2018, and nobody expects it to. I think it is something that the government thinks will help get a "no" vote to Scottish independence.
They'll get their "wee spacey house" If they would only be good little subjects and vote to remain part of Britain so England can still pretend to be an imperial power?
Braveheart would not approve.
A quick check of today's date and it's not April 1st. It would have helped explain a lot ...
I cannot believe this is seriously being considered. Not only for efficiency reasons, but for the fact that each rocket launch into high atmosphere always punches a huge hole into the ozone layer, consuming massive amounts of energy and resources, and is an all-round hazard for life on Earth. Why some people keep holding onto the idea of creating this kind of "fair ride", which in the end is exactly what it is, is beyond me.
How about getting the England football team beyond the first round for the next world cup? This I see as a much better plan for 2018.
Secret missions possibly. The UK government might want a domestic launch site, rather than have to entrust France with all their secret missions.
Or it might be, as many speculate, pure politics: This isn't coming from down London, this is being pushed by Scottish politicians. A big, expensive, high-tech project like that could do much to showcase Scotland as an economic success, stressing both to their own citizens and the rest of the world that they don't need the rest of the UK. There's a strong emphesis on the article on spaceplanes, a form of commercial aeronautics still in the development stage - having one of the first useable facilities would be a great prestige.
This is for suborbital tourism, with speeds up to mach 4. There are a glut of spaceports to LEO as is.
You could ask for a Commonwealth like site near the equator. /Delta from locations like Kourou in French Guiana.
Skynet (satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
or a Commonwealth site with open land to pick up the parts after a test/error.
e.g. Woomera Test Range in Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
As for spy equipment the UK has been happy to use Ariane/Titan
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If it is political theatre, 'spaceplanes' are doubly convenient: not only are they the new-and-cutting-edge-hotness, they also have ground requirements much closer to 'airport with atypically long runway' rather than the sort of expensive and specialized apparatus that very large vertically launched systems often do (the KSC's Crawler-Transporter vehicles are undeniably endearing; but not something I'd want to cost-justify...)
If the PR renders are anything to go by, you can pretty much take an existing airfield, knock down any ugly buildings that the media might see, and replace them with cool, ultramodern equivalents, and you've got a spaceport.
It's obviously for the escape to the secret Mars colony when SHTF.
Scotland Has Total Freedom ??
Scotland started its space exploration work in the 19th century.The first rocket (see link) encountered some technical difficulties, but we expect to get those sorted out soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
In that case the normal move is to place it in Australia. Lots of space, stable government and strong social, economic and political ties. As for secrecy already a part of 5 Eyes, so not a problem there, likely when it comes to 5 Eyes they likely could shift a large percentage of that cost to that alliance, so Australia, Canada, New Zealand UK and US would all chip in to fund it. Reason why Scotland, straight up carrot and stick for the independence vote. How will the Scots receive it, likely pretty badly as a straight up carrot and stick scam.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This kind of promise "we give you something" to "buy" a vote, it looks really like EU maneuvers for Ireland (or less recently UK and others.) Glad to see that you approve the Union, now.
Relax, everyone. This is a non-story; it isn't going to happen, and no-one seriously expects it to.
We're having a referendum in September on whether to separate from the UK and become an independent nation. The UK government has woken up - very late - to the realisation that it's quite likely to lose, and consequently will also lose its only nuclear submarine base, 90% of its oil revenue, and probably its permanent seat on the UN security council. Consequently they're panicking and offering us all sorts of unlikely bribes. The spaceport won't happen because
So relax. The fact that there's no money and no commercial use for it, and that we're too far from the equator, doesn't matter; no-one seriously intends to build it. It's a media stunt, pure and simple. It isn't going to happen.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
The potential for a whole new genre of Scotsman jokes is giving comedians everywhere goose bumps.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Set phasers to malkie!
While I was VP for Public Affairs at E'Prime Aerospace, we evaluated various sites for establishing a space port to launch our MX-derived rockets. It turned out that the presence of a military air strip at Ascension Island allowed a military jet transport large enough to deliver entire launch vehicles. Of course, the MX system was solid fueled so we didn't have to transport cryogenics long distances, but it would be feasible to set up a LOX facility on the island. There is a particular coastal cliff that is ideal for a launch pad.
Seastead this.
Where are all the low cost, efficient, low emissions, low fuel consuming propulsion systems needed for the man on the street to give a s*$t..
hahahahaha.
What a funny ploy.
What if Scotland actually votes for independence?
We launch from the equator for a reason. Since when is Scotland near the equator?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Not a good idea, IMO.
Have gnu, will travel.
A proper kilt...will keep the ice off the space craft.
No "true Scotsman" rocket would launch without one!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Prestwick International Airport is modestly famous as the only place in Britain to ever have been visited by Elvis.* If the aliens are ever going to return him, this seems like the obvious place to go.
*He was transferring through on his way home from the war.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
With the risk of this being "Scotlands" space port ..
Lots of mentioning of scotland in the text.
I'm not well aware of the positiong issue you mention, though I do understand that part =P
Was is the advantage of the opposite such as the Esrange (Kiruna) base here in Sweden?
http://www.sscspace.com/esrang...
The amount of space available?
They mention " investigation of the aurora borealis" here so maybe that's it? http://digilander.libero.it/lo...
They could build it in Govan.
If you bothered to even open the link you would have seen that it's Virgin Galactic payloads and people, not ground based rocketry. A White Knight will carry the second stage aloft and they could easily fly south, avoid weather and get LEO insertion to access a large body of clients. So, very possibly the site with the longest runway, but one might be lengthened to get better weather elsewhere. Numbnuts!
...liquid oxygen and used fry oil.
Won't be part of Britain for much longer.
This whole idea is thoroughly stillborn.
Both of the current sub-orbital space-plane systems (Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 and XCOR Lynx) that could use this UK site are being built in the US and all their rocket technology is therefore solidly covered by US ITAR laws that prevent their export.
The US sees valuable economic activity in this sector and it wants this sub-orbital market to remain on US shores, so there is no motive to even relax ITAR in this area. In fact, while some ITAR laws are currently being loosened, the political elements are actively trying to tighten them where they have any bearing on human spaceflight -- specifically in response to efforts like this.
Regardless of whether the UK base for this is in Scotland, Wales, England or anywhere else, these bases will only ever be used if a new company develops a brand new space-plane outside of the US in competition. The same goes for all other spaceports in Europe and Saudi Arabia too, which hope to attract at least Virgin Galactic. Right now, they have zero chance.
As a further aside, there is also no way Scotland can be used for launching orbital missions. They can't launch East safely because Denmark, Norway and Sweden (and others) are all in the danger-zone under the flight-path and the Flight Path would come suspiciously close to Moscow too, and orbital rockets look awfully similar to ICBM's. And they won't risk launching North fro Scotland, over the North Sea oil rigs either -- they simply won't risk another Piper Alpha or Deep Water Horizons scale accident there.
midges.
... they also have ground requirements much closer to 'airport with atypically long runway' ...
If that's what they need then the Irish government should look at creating a spaceport near Shannon, which has a gigantic runway,suitable both for the frequent US military stopovers to and from the Middle East, and (I was told) for the Shuttle, should an emergency ever have arisen requiring a landing in Europe if Edwards or elsewhere was unavailable. But that may just be local pride :-)
Shuttle Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) sites included Lajes Air Base in Terceira island, Azores, Portugal; Zaragoza Air Base,Spain; MorÃn Air Base, Spain; Istres Air Base, France; Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory; Cologne Bonn Airport, Germany; Ben Guerir Air Base, Morocco; Casablanca, Morocco; Banjul International Airport, The Gambia; Dakar, Senegal; Rota, Spain; Kano, Nigeria; and RAF Fairford, UK.
Shannon airport was never on the Shuttle TAL list.