Spaceport proposed for defunct Nova Scotia town
CANSO, N.S. — It’s a 400-year-old Nova Scotia fishing village struggling to stay afloat — times have been so tough the town was dissolved five years ago.
Now, tiny Canso is being touted as the future home of Canada’s only commercial spaceport.
Maritime Launch Services Ltd. announced Tuesday that it has committed to establishing a launch complex near Canso.
The Halifax-based company, which is a joint venture of three U.S.-based firms, said it chose Canso after an assessment of 14 potential locations across North America.
Steve Matier, head of spaceport development, said the company met with residents last month, and many joked about the Canso area as a location.
“They described Canso as not at the end of the Earth, but you could see it from there,” said Matier in a telephone interview from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“That’s what you are really looking for. You are looking for a place that has a good buffer from people and an access to a trajectory so that you have a client base that is interested in putting satellites into orbit.”
Matier said the facility would launch medium-sized (3,350 kilogram) rockets on a due south trajectory. The cost of each launch is targeted at $45 million US.
The venture would also mark Canso’s return to the cutting edge.
In the 1880s, the community was the landing spot for a key subsea communications cable between North America and Europe. The cable was used to transmit news of the Titanic disaster in 1912 and later carried word of the end of the First World War in 1918.
Vernon Pitts, warden of the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, said he’s hoping the project breathes new life into the defunct town, which experienced a devastating downturn in its ground-fishing industry roughly two decades ago.
“That pretty much decimated the town and they’ve been struggling ever since. There’s work down there but there’s never enough work and never enough people,” said Pitts of the tiny community, which has been a fishing port since 1604.
It became an independent town in 1901 and was dissolved into the Guysborough municipality in 2012.
He estimates the town now has perhaps 500 residents — less than half its 2006 population, according to Statistics Canada.
“We’re land rich and people poor. We have lots of land and a prime location, and people are really excited about this. We’re certainly hoping that it will continue forward.”
Once completed, the site would be used to launch the Ukrainianbuilt Cyclone 4M rocket into space.
The company said the Ukrainian provider of the rocket, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, has been in operation for 62 years and has built and launched more than 400 spacecraft.
CEO John Isella said the project is solely a commercial venture and no government funding has been requested, mainly due to the relationship with the Ukrainian firm. He said it will cost upward of $226 million to get the company to the first launch.
“We are leveraging the tremendous heritage that exists in Ukraine in the rocket industry,” Isella said. “So we are not starting from scratch with the design of a rocket or with the design of the launch complex.”
Isella said the company is optimistic it can break ground on its new facility within a year and meet market demands with a first launch in late 2020.