The race to be the first British spaceport
The countdown to the first orbital rocket launch from UK soil has officially begun,” crowed Patrick Wood, Lockheed Martin’s UK country executive for space. Wood was talking up the company’s plans for the UK’s first spaceport in Scotland – but there’s competition. The government started talking about a British spaceport back in 2014, when it earmarked eight possible locations for conversion by 2018. But in 2016, the competition ended without choosing a location; instead, regulations would be tweaked to allow any suitable spot to be used under a licence. In March, the Space Industry Bill was passed, allowing spaceports in the UK for the first time. Since then, two leaders have emerged in a race to become the UK’s first spaceport – a vertical site in Sutherland, Scotland and a horizontal launch site at Newquay. The Sutherland location is being developed by Lockheed Martin and will enable vertical orbital rocket launches by the “early 2020s”. It’s being propped up by £2.5 million from the UK Space Agency.
Further south, the Spaceport Cornwall project is working on a horizontal runway, which US-based Virgin Orbit plans to use by 2021. The aim is to use a Boeing 747-400 to lift a rocket to 35,000 feet over the Atlantic, where it will head into orbit with a satellite. The other two horizontal launch sites are sharing a £2 million development fund, with the aim to launch satellites and suborbital flights.
As exciting as space planes sound, it’s a slow-moving race, says Professor Smith. “Spaceports [are] moving at a snail’s pace. Three years ago, they were about to announce where the ports would be,” he told PC Pro, exlaining that companies could build a spaceport in a couple of years. “We seem to be in the usual British way of finding it very difficult to make these big decisions.”