What it takes to be a spaceport “I think it’s also important to recognise that spaceports can serve as focal points and technology hubs” George Nield
The criteria for a spaceport is centred around the safety of operations with respect to its surrounding area
combo is 50-metres (164-feet) tall and is capable of transporting passengers to the Moon and Mars.
In September 2018, Musk announced that someone has already bought tickets to the Moon on board SpaceX’s Starship. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, founder of Zozotown, will take a translunar flight as early as 2023. Neither Musk or Maezawa revealed how much the flight cost, and all that was divulged was that Maezawa has already made a substantial downpayment.
SpaceX also has plans to make Starship a point-to-point suborbital flight to destinations all around the world. In a promotional video posted by SpaceX in September 2017, it showed passengers boarding a Starship rocket that would take them from New York to Shanghai in just 39 minutes. In July 2019 it was also reported that the European Space Agency is drafting plans to start operating suborbital flights from Spaceport Cornwall that could start offering journeys from the UK to Australia that take just 90 minutes. This is a journey that would conventionally take roughly 20 hours by aeroplane.
Nield has stated that these kinds of suborbital point-to-point flights should start with shortdistance journeys to nearby spaceports. But there needs to be a collective and overarching policy for everyone to adhere to. “We can articulate and document and then communicate this vision in a new policy,” he said, pointing out that this whole process could lead to a new office of spaceports with the help of the FAA. “If we can get that up and running with the appropriate resources, staff and funding, that office could be a huge benefit in terms of being a focal point and an advocate.”
Blue Origin will offer a unique experience, as passengers are jettisoned to the edge of the Earth to gaze upon its awe-inspiring curvature for prices yet unknown. Jeff Bezos’ team reached some major milestones during testing of the reusable, vertically launched New Shepard rocket-capsule pairing in 2019 at its FAA-licensed West Texas suborbital test launch site. On 2 May 2019 New
Shepard was jettisoned to a personal-record altitude of 106 kilometres (66 miles) while carrying 38 science experiments for various organisations, including NASA. After the launch the rocket made a safe vertical landing and the capsule was gently placed on the West Texas plains. When it is fully operational, this unique 18-metre (60-foot) rocket will take six people beyond the imaginary line of space known as the Kármán line, which lies at 100 kilometres (62 miles) in altitude. During this 11-minute vertical flight, tourists will be able to experience weightlessness for four of those minutes. After the event is concluded, the entire set-up can be refuelled, reconfigured and reused – and that will make the cost a lot cheaper.
The third billionaire space-tourism enthusiast is Sir Richard Branson with his Virgin Galactic.
This offers an entirely different option of space tourism to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Virgin Galactic aims to take its passengers to space using the
reusable SpaceShipTwo spaceflight system, with the current operational model referred to as VSS Unity. This craft performs a horizontal launch from Virgin’s spaceport using a custom-built aircraft carrier called WhiteKnightTwo. When the launch vehicle reaches an altitude of 15 kilometres (nine miles), SpaceShipTwo will detach and finish off the journey beyond the Kármán line.
This adventure has appealed to plenty of people already, and reportedly over 600 people from 60 countries have already placed deposits to be one of the first of Branson’s high-flyers. The fare for such an adventure is to be within the region of £200,000 ($250,000) for the 90-minute spaceflight. It’s a hefty price, but you could find yourself sitting next to some celebrities that have already bought their tickets, such as the
likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Justin Bieber and many others.
Virgin Galactic has had highs and lows during testing. A chasmic depth was the crash of VSS Unity’s predecessor, VSS Enterprise, in the Mojave Desert, California, on 31 October 2014. This disaster claimed the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury, while pilot Peter Siebold was severely injured. Much to its credit, Virgin Galactic regrouped and has since conducted several successful test flights, the most recent being on 22 February 2019. This test saw three astronauts, including the first-ever passenger, soar to an altitude of 90 kilometres (56 miles).
Virgin Galactic recently relocated its employees and its testing and commercial operations from the Mojave Air and Space Port, California, to a cosy spot known as Spaceport America, the world’s first fully commercial spaceport in the desert basin of New Mexico. This is a huge step forward for the company’s plans to dominate space tourism, as this spaceport will be the hub for its operations. Virgin has recently announced its ‘Gateway to Space’, a swanky communal area for paying customers, a little like an airport lounge. It won’t be long now before customers are strolling through spaceports in the same relaxed and calm manner as they would go through an airport, grabbing a coffee while they wait for their flight.
This could be the case for many horizontal launches, as Thorpe explains: “A horizontal-launch spaceport, such as ours, can operate from an existing airport – in our case Cornwall Airport
Newquay. A spaceport requires separate legislation to allow flights and launches. This secondary legislation for spaceflight will give us the regulations required to launch satellites in the UK. We are an operational commercial airport, and we will be fully integrating space launches with Virgin Orbit into our everyday airline activities. We will be one of the only places in the world to do this.”
Space tourism is not a new concept. The
Russian space agency Roscosmos, in tandem with the American space tourism company Space Adventures, has been sending wealthier members of the public into space since 2001. The first one to exploit the market was American engineer and entrepreneur Dennis Tito. He had a luxurious week-long stay on board the ISS, which reportedly set him back £15 million ($20 million). Since then several super-rich clients have spent tens of millions to go to the ISS, and are continuing to do so, as two more tourists are due to launch in 2021. All of these missions were launched – and will continue to be launched – from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz rocket. An extreme percentage of the fee would likely go to launch costs, as the Soyuz rockets are not reusable.
The vast expense of such an adventure is the main reason why space tourism was deemed unreachable. But with this wave of emphasis on reusability and a string of promising tests performed by the aforementioned aerospace companies, other industries and organisations around the world are looking to become a part of this rapidly growing industry.
Expanding horizons beyond the constraints of the United States and Russia, spaceports are being lined up around the world. Europe could see the advent of spaceports in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal. Even Australia and Asia are getting their own gateways to space in order to exploit this expanding market. In fact, in 2017 the UK House of Commons prepared a ‘Space Sector Report’ that stated that the current global space economy market is worth somewhere between £155 and £190 billion (approximately $200 and $250 billion), and is expected to reach £400 billion (around $530 billion) by 2030. This is over double the value in just ten years’ time. With companies and organisations all over the world investing in this growing market, it is likely that space tourism could soon be a worldwide phenomenon.
“We will be fully integrating space launches with Virgin Orbit into our everyday airline activities”
Melissa Thorpe