Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

The Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands of Scotland announced today that it has gotten a £30 million ($35 million) investment from the government of the United Kingdom, that must also be matched by additional private investment capital.

The government investment, which is subject to due diligence, is being announced as part of the UK’s updated space strategy published today (Tuesday), and will be complemented by £30 million of planned private investment.

The spaceport said the funding will support completion of key infrastructure as it moves towards regular commercial launch operations. It is targeted towards all three launchpads, mission management infrastructure and second integration hangar required by international launch companies keen to bring their business to the UK.

The timing of this announcement, only days after Germany’s rocket startup Isar Aerospace completed the first European private rocket launch from Norway’s Andoya spaceport, suggests it is an effort to salvage some positive PR, since Saxavord started its spaceport effort before Norway and yet lost the race for the first launch.

Whether Saxavord actually gets this government investment remains uncertain, as it must be matched by private sources. Considering the lack of interest the UK government has in eliminating the odious red tape that has stalled launches at all UK spaceports while bankrupting two rocket companies, we should not be surprised if Saxavord has trouble raising that private money.

The spaceport presently has two German rocket companies signed on, Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, but the former’s launch this year was scrubbed due to technical issues with a reschedule partly stalled due to that red tape. The latter meanwhile only intends to do a suborbital launch. These launches will likely take place, but expect these companies to move elsewhere when they finally begin ramping up their launch cadence. Neither can survive the kind of bureaucratic licensing delays that killed Virgin Orbit and Orbex, and so far the UK appears uninterested in dealing with this issue.