spacetoday.net: UK announces shortlist of spaceport sites

Posted: Thu, Jul 17, 2014, 6:50 AM ET (1050 GMT)
UK spaceport illustration (UKSA)

The British government announced this week a list of eight potential sites for a commercial spaceport that could be in operation by 2018. The eight sites are all existing airports or military bases, six of them in Scotland and one each in England and Wales, which would host vehicles that take off and land horizontally. The UK Space Agency, which announced the shortlist of spaceport sites at the Farnborough air show Tuesday, hopes that commercial suborbital and orbital vehicle companies will operate out of one of those potential sites starting in 2018. The government also announced plans to establish a regulatory regime for commercial spaceflight similar to that in place in the United States, where the focus is on protection of the uninvolved public.