Slashdot Mirror
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."
We'll give you SPACESHIPS if you stay! (promise)
It's of a lot of use if you're aiming to leave earth orbit though, for interplanetary probes. A site this far north is really good for polar orbits and that's about it. Even the ISS isn't that heavily inclined - you could get there from Scotland, but it'd use more fuel than a launch from further south. That's why the ISS is supplied from Guiana Space Center: It's in Europe*, so politically suitable, while still being close to the equator.
*It's in Europe the same way Hawaii is in the USA. It may be geographically remote, but legally and politically it's still France.
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.
We prefer realistic goals.
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.