UK Space Agency to Build a Spaceport
Build it and they will come. That was the message from the UK Space Agency today as it revealed ambitious plans to build a spaceport somewhere in the UK before 2018. However, no commercial space company has yet demonstrated a spaceplane that is capable of carrying paying passengers.
The plan is to build a spaceport at a remote site where regular airline traffic is low. The location also has to have a longer-than usual runway or room to build one. This is because after a hypersonic re-entry, spaceplanes will still be travelling at far greater speeds than standard planes and will need more room to land.