The Eight Places the UK Might Build Its First Spaceport

As commercial space flight zooms closer, the UK has announced a shortlist of potential locations for its first ever spaceport.

The government unveiled eight possible sites at Farnborough Air Show today, with the focus on reaping the rewards from space tourism. The country already has a close tie to the fast-growing industry in British-owned Virgin Galactic, but what use is a space plane without a spaceport, after all?

Eight locations were revealed, of which one is in England, one in Wales, and the rest in Scotland. The plan is to get the first spaceport up and running by 2018 (four years late for Richard Branson’s first flight, if he’s still holding out for his planned 2014 trip).

The UK is clearly taking the US’s lead on this one, with the Department for Transport’s consultation on the matter drawing heavily on US plans and regulation. It recognises that in 2018, space planes flying from Britain will almost definitely be US-designed and works on the assumption that “the necessary export licenses would be in place to allow US sub-orbital operations in the UK.”

Building a spaceport in the UK poses a greater challenge than on the other side of the Atlantic, where there are already a fair few; Virgin Galactic’s first flight is set to lift off from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Speaking from the air show today, Richard Taylor at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) explained the difficulty. “In the United States, commercial space operations are out in the desert,” he said. “Obviously we haven’t got a desert in the UK, so our equivalent is really coastal locations.”

It's all about location, because for the kind of planes that'll get you out into orbit you need room for a runway that’s at least 3,000 metres long, and a low population density. Only one of the airports picked out in the UK, Campbeltown, currently has a runway that’s over 3,000 metres. Space is something the UK doesn’t have much of; comparative population is something it has a lot of.

Additionally, the CAA requires airspace for space planes to be segregated from other air traffic. “We need to create an environment where no other aircraft can enter or interfere with the flight path of the space plane,” Taylor said. That rules out most of the Southeast.

Other considerations include environmental regulations regarding air and noise pollution, as well as transport links, as passengers will need to get to the spaceport just like any other airport. In their report, the CAA also gives a detailed breakdown of meteorological conditions at the various sites.

These basic criteria are why so many of the potential sites find themselves on the Scottish coastline, but there’s concern over political issues that might throw a spanner in the works. A vote for Scottish independence in September’s referendum would mean no chance of a UK spaceport in Scotland, according to New Scientist.

That would leave only Newquay Cornwall Airport in England and Llanbedr Airport in Wales on the CAA’s list. “It’s something that’s out of our hands; the decision itself will be made by the government,” Taylor said.

The next step is a consultation handled by the Department for Transport, to narrow down the shortlist and ultimately pick the spaceport site. Start saving now and you might be slightly closer to affording a ticket by the time it's built.