Ready for take-off

A peninsula on Scotland’s north coast has been chosen for the site of the UK’S first spaceport.

Mull of Kintyre, and Gwnedd are also each to recieve £2 million of funding to find out if there is a business case for commercial, horizontal, vertical spaceports at these locations.

Samuelcoldstream It’ll be interesting to see how they get round environmental designations. Most of A’mhoine is designated SSSI, SAC, SPA and Ramsar. Although parts of the peninsula are not statutorily protected, it’s likely that access roads, power and other services would need to cross protected areas.

Colinbattle The Kennedy Space Center is a National Wildlife Reserve. And there will be no landing facilities. This is being proposed as the vertical launch site, Prestwick is on the potential list of horizontal launches.

kmcn

This is an exciting development which has great potential for the chosen locality and Scotland in general. I wish all involved every success and I hope that it will lead to more young people choosing science and technology for their careers as a result.

Brian J With the weather and dark days and midges up there it won’t be much of a tourist attraction.

Fishsupper Great news for the British economy. Even better if we dump the EU Galileo project and go ahead with a UK/ Australian/nz GPA satellite system.

Stuart Cowan That means that all the space launch equipment, telemetry and space cadets will have to be moved from the former vertical launch site at Prestwick to A’mhoine in Sutherland. I would challenge any of the resident seps to pronounce the new site name, but you can be sure there will be a road sign in Gaelic.

Ingin Johnnie

Look forward to seeing this develop or take off ....

Luckie Mucklebackit

This could finally put Scotland on the map. People around the world might think its no longer a northmost county of England.

eurochampsagain Stupid waste of money that will come to nothing. How about spending £2.5 million instead on the feasibility study of laying a superconducting cable between Sutherland and Iceland?

Kampunghighlander