Proposed Las Vegas spaceport signs deal with launch startup
A private spaceport proposed for the desert west of Las Vegas has signed a deal with launch startup company to wants to use a 747 to launch reusable rockets.
Robert Lauer, director of Las Vegas Spaceport, announced a partnership with O-G Launch, a company headed by Robert Feierbach. Feierbach’s company aims to be a part of the commercial space industry by launching satellites from recyclable rockets deployed from large jets.
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed, but it is expected that companies seeking to deploy satellites would use O-G Launch aircraft starting from the Las Vegas Spaceport to launch a satellite-bearing rocket from 40,000 feet.
To put it mildly, this project is hardly a spaceport. It is planned as a casino, a resort, and a flight school with a runway. O-G helps give it the appearance of a spaceport by allowing it to claim orbital launches will take place there. Whether O-G ever takes off is another thing entirely. Its presence as part of the project, however, provides great PR for attracting customers to the proposed resort/casino.
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 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
A private spaceport proposed for the desert west of Las Vegas has signed a deal with launch startup company to wants to use a 747 to launch reusable rockets.
Robert Lauer, director of Las Vegas Spaceport, announced a partnership with O-G Launch, a company headed by Robert Feierbach. Feierbach’s company aims to be a part of the commercial space industry by launching satellites from recyclable rockets deployed from large jets.
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed, but it is expected that companies seeking to deploy satellites would use O-G Launch aircraft starting from the Las Vegas Spaceport to launch a satellite-bearing rocket from 40,000 feet.
To put it mildly, this project is hardly a spaceport. It is planned as a casino, a resort, and a flight school with a runway. O-G helps give it the appearance of a spaceport by allowing it to claim orbital launches will take place there. Whether O-G ever takes off is another thing entirely. Its presence as part of the project, however, provides great PR for attracting customers to the proposed resort/casino.
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 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
During WW2, the US built tons of airbases across the Mid and Southwest. Postwar, almost all were sold to the local county or city for a dollar each. You can tell them easily, the three runways laid out in an A pattern with street names like A Drive, 3rd Street, etc on the grounds. At least in the Eighties, many still had their WW2 era buildings, some converted, but most boarded up with “Industrial Site Available” signs out front. I can remember flying into one in Idaho when I had a private license that proudly proclaimed itself as being “XYZ International Airport”. I went to the one open building – serving as control tower, passenger and freight terminal, and Fixed Based Operator’s (“Official Cessna Dealer”/”Learn To Fly”/Etc) Office – obviously Base Operations back in the day, you practically expected to hear the B-17s cranking up in the background when you weren’t looking out a window – to pay my landing fee and for gas and picked up an airline brochure from the empty passenger lounge along with a coke from the vending machine on my way back to my flying machine. Looking at the brochure while I quenched my thirst, I found the place lived up to its billing. It had one, single engine puddle jumper flight to and from a spot on the Canadian prairies each way on weekdays. It’s now probably a ” Spaceport”. as well.
As a financial guy, I detect the sounds of too much cash sloshing around the Street looking for the Next Big Thing.
Robert wrote: “To put it mildly, this project is hardly a spaceport. It is planned as a casino, a resort, and a flight school with a runway. O-G helps give it the appearance of a spaceport by allowing it to claim orbital launches will take place there.”
The Mojave Air and Space Port is still a spaceport. If the proposed Las Vegas facility is able to put payloads into orbit, then it will earn its spaceport status.
The last time Robert reported on this Las Vegas project, the company didn’t mention a specific launch company to perform this function, just some vague hope that people will be able launch to orbit from there. The company may be making progress on this front.
Finally, the article mentions that the proposed payload launch company is headed by a former SpaceX engineer. This is another case of SpaceX developing space industry leaders, not just launch vehicles and communication constellations.