Orbex delays first launch from Saxavord until 2026
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea
The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.
Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.
Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).
Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea
The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.
Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.
Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).
Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“…delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. ”
Bob Goddard sent out an email this morning, furious that he applied for his launch permit in 1928 and it was just approved. Furious.
The UK seems unserious about furthering space-flight technology.
I can only dream of an audit of the CAA process. Can you imagine if they had to actually detail how many man hours have been dedicated to this approval process, what work products have been generated, and at what cost to the UK taxpayers? This is a process, that if done quite thoroughly and in painstaking detail, should take less, far less, than 1,000 billable hours. The only reason it takes years is because that’s the incentive they’re rewarding. Actually finishing and delivering a permit is not anything the CAA considers to be of any value.
Britain, 19th Century: :Ignites Industrial Revolution:
Britain, 21st Century: Trust us, we won’t let that nonsense happen again
That’s about right..they are some of the worst Greenies.
I guess they could always say they are the alternative to American tech-bro launchers –but they may have been too successful at sliming spaceflight in general for even that to work.
For all their revolutionary zeal, the French answered the protest of them shooting off the West’s last nuke and such with Rainbow Warrior.
Not even Trump would pull something like that.
I miss those Frenchmen.
During the whole “Freedom Fries” deal, there were two competing programs here on martial arts. Folks from other countries let the Yanks win.
Not the French.
One kicked a host to where he doubled over.
“Human Weapon” I think it was.
Is there a single European country, space agency, or rocket company that is actually serious about getting into space? The EU has nothing but more regulation to offer, CAA clearly doesn’t want British rockets to fly (ever), the Ariane 6 is a joke, the Italians can’t get out of their own way, and the French remain … well, the French. The Germans, Spanish, and Scandis have nothing to offer, and East Europe of course today lacks the economics, technical capability, and desire to get into space.
The correct response for us in America is to nod politely and laugh to ourselves, and keep nudging ourselves forward. Get the NASA bureaucracy under control (perhaps President Trump will nominate Mr. Zimmerman to be its next director?), end the SLS, keep providing contracts to SpaceX and Rocket Lab (and not to Boeing), and keep encouraging others to join the fun.
Link up some oil derricks and be your own nation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
That’s too small.
I think Poland is worth keeping an eye on — they have an astronaut on ISS as we speak as part of Axiom 4, and they show serious signs of building up a domestic satellite industry — and they are just big enough and economically successful enough that they could do something significant in space.
Their disadvantages are geography (no suitable place to build an orbital launch complex) and the urgency of their ongoing military buildup, which will create pressure to push whatever they might spend on space into milspace applications.
For the established major European powers, their political and economic situations are all so bad right now that it’s going to continue to be difficult to find the bandwidth or the money to step up things in space. When Italy has the most stable and popular government of any major Western European state, you know things are dire.
Richard M wrote: “Their disadvantages are geography (no suitable place to build an orbital launch complex) …”
I think that is an advantage. They are not going to spend a lot of money trying to develop a launch vehicle and all the facilities to support it. Think of the tens of billions of dollars they will save. Instead, they hire Axiom or another company to take their space program to orbit, manned or robotic. They can save additional dollars by hiring other companies to build the robotic satellites or probes for an unmanned space program. They benefit by doing in space what they want done, and vendor companies benefit by profiting from constructing or renting space systems (launches, space stations, satellites, etc.).
Meanwhile, the CAA kills off British aspirations for a space industry. They already killed their most promising launch company, Virgin Orbit.
At the same time, Rocket Lab is doing a good job of ramping up its launch cadence as well as making satellites and providing other services for companies and space programs. I see a good future for the space industry from the launchers to the satellite operators to future probes, and to the space programs of countries, companies, universities, and billionaires. As long as they avoid the CAA.
Richard M,
Can’t disagree with any of that. The Italy thing is certainly ironic. I think the reason it is true is that Italy is just the first large European nation to get a local-language version of MAGA-esque leaderhip. But I don’t think it will be the last. And once France and Germany follow suit, the EU’s days are numbered. Even the Brits electing Farage would be a major step toward the EU’s inevitable doom. The increasingly likely spectacle of Canada cracking up will also have echoes in Europe.
Anent space, once they’ve seen off the Russians, the Ukrainians could well be factors – again – in space as they were during the late Soviet period. The early 2030s – both in space and here on the ground – seem fated to look almost nothing like the early 2020s. And that’s a good thing.