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."

Comments

Rather far north.

[jellomizer]

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

Re:Rather far north.

[Rashdot]

Yes, but these are politicians performing a carrot and stick maneuver on Scotland.

Re:Rather far north.

[Bearhouse]

Indeed - and having stayed there, I can confirm the weather around Kinloss is usually awful.

Sounds like a "make work" effort at this very remote location. At least if something blows up on the pad or shortly after launch there's not much around to damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:Rather far north.

[peragrin]

It gets better, in 2 months Scotland votes to decide if it wants to leave the UK. does anyone think that a site will be chosen that might suddenly no longer be part of the UK?

Re:Rather far north.

[Chris Mattern]

It's even more worth noting that there's a plebicite on Scottish independence coming up very soon.

Re: Rather far north.

[Pseudonym]

For that matter, Scotland might not be Britain by the time it's built.

Re:Rather far north.

[fuzzywig]

Nah mate, Ascension is closer to the equator and already has ESA facilities.

Re: Rather far north.

[ShanghaiBill]

For that matter, Scotland might not be Britain by the time it's built.

1. If Scotland votes to leave the UK, then the spaceport will NOT be built. The whole point of this proposal is to encourage the Scots to stay, so they get all the spaceport jobs and prestige.

2. If Scotland votes to stay in the UK, then the spaceport will likely still not be built. Once the referendum is over, there will no longer be any political reason to continue, and technically, Scotland is about the dumbest place in the world to build a spaceport. It is way too far north, and is due west of major population areas in northern Europe.

Please don't leave the UK!

[zacherynuk]

We'll give you SPACESHIPS if you stay! (promise)

Hardly viable...

[Wdi]

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.

Re:Hardly viable...

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Hardly viable...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Political background

[Simon Brooke]

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

1. If we vote 'yes', it's not going to be an urgent priority of the Scottish government;
2. if we vote 'no', this and all the other promised bribes will be quietly forgotten.

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.