UK finally gives Saxavord spaceport a license
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom finally issued a spaceport license today to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, thirteen months after the application was submitted.
This license however does not mean that launches will take place anytime soon. First, Saxavord will have to resume construction of its facilities, which ceased earlier this year because of the CAA hadn’t issued the permit. Moreover, this license does not allow launches. As noted by the CAA:
Spaceport licences allow a person or organisation to operate a spaceport, they are granted in the UK under the Space Industry Act 2018 (SIA). For a launch to happen an operator will need to have developed and proven their technology, be operationally ready, and have a launch licence from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted language is especially crushing, because it literally forbids the launch of any new untested rocket. Since every single rocket so far being developed for these two spaceports is new and untested, none will be allowed to launch unless they move operations elsewhere. This requirement explains for example why the startup ABL shifted its next launch from the Sutherland spaceport — it had hoped to launch this year — to Kodiak, Alaska. Orbex will have even more problems, as it has signed a fifty year lease to launch its new Prime rocket from Sutherland, with its rocket factory close by. If it can’t test fly Prime from Sutherland the company will be very badly hampered.
Even if these companies eventually get launch licenses for their untried rockets, expect such approvals to take a very long time, based on the CAA’s past and present history. It took the CAA almost a year to approve Virgin Orbit’s launch license, essentially bankrupting the company.
Nor are my conclusions here — which I have been stating now for more than a year — simply opinions. They have now been confirmed by a new report issued only a few days ago by the UK Space Agency, which admitted the following:
- Operators reported finding this process disproportionate and time-consuming, and would therefore benefit from a review of proportionality, as well as conducting these checks earlier in the application process to avoid delays.
- For a commercial launch to take place from the UK, there are requirements to obtain a launch licence, an orbital licence, a spaceport licence, a marine licence, as well as the need to obtain other licences/permits from UK and foreign bodies e.g. planning permission for spaceports, airspace permits outside the UK, with dependencies on airspace arrangements and international arrangements. Operators reported that the requirement to provide the same information to be compliant with the licensing procedures of numerous different government agencies and bodies proved complex and time consuming to navigate.
- Operators and satellite providers repeatedly raised concerns over liabilities and insurance being disproportionate, burdensome and an impediment to progress towards launch.
- An understandable lack of familiarity with space launch in some European countries, hampered the negotiation of government-to-government arrangements designed to authorise the agreement of common practice and tactical/operational mechanisms used amongst airspace regulators and in the marine domain.
The last item is most interesting, because it suggests some of the delay was imposed by other European governments. One can’t help wondering if these difficulties were intended to stymie for political reasons success in space in the UK, so that competiting operations in Spain, France, Germany, and Scandinavian might have an advantage.
Regardless, the report makes a lot of good recommendations, all of which however will be difficult to implement quickly because of the number of government bureaucracies involved. All will work to defend their turf, making any political decisions challenging. The only real fix would be an elected leadership willing to cut the gordian knot, something that does not appear to exist in Great Britain.
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
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom finally issued a spaceport license today to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, thirteen months after the application was submitted.
This license however does not mean that launches will take place anytime soon. First, Saxavord will have to resume construction of its facilities, which ceased earlier this year because of the CAA hadn’t issued the permit. Moreover, this license does not allow launches. As noted by the CAA:
Spaceport licences allow a person or organisation to operate a spaceport, they are granted in the UK under the Space Industry Act 2018 (SIA). For a launch to happen an operator will need to have developed and proven their technology, be operationally ready, and have a launch licence from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted language is especially crushing, because it literally forbids the launch of any new untested rocket. Since every single rocket so far being developed for these two spaceports is new and untested, none will be allowed to launch unless they move operations elsewhere. This requirement explains for example why the startup ABL shifted its next launch from the Sutherland spaceport — it had hoped to launch this year — to Kodiak, Alaska. Orbex will have even more problems, as it has signed a fifty year lease to launch its new Prime rocket from Sutherland, with its rocket factory close by. If it can’t test fly Prime from Sutherland the company will be very badly hampered.
Even if these companies eventually get launch licenses for their untried rockets, expect such approvals to take a very long time, based on the CAA’s past and present history. It took the CAA almost a year to approve Virgin Orbit’s launch license, essentially bankrupting the company.
Nor are my conclusions here — which I have been stating now for more than a year — simply opinions. They have now been confirmed by a new report issued only a few days ago by the UK Space Agency, which admitted the following:
- Operators reported finding this process disproportionate and time-consuming, and would therefore benefit from a review of proportionality, as well as conducting these checks earlier in the application process to avoid delays.
- For a commercial launch to take place from the UK, there are requirements to obtain a launch licence, an orbital licence, a spaceport licence, a marine licence, as well as the need to obtain other licences/permits from UK and foreign bodies e.g. planning permission for spaceports, airspace permits outside the UK, with dependencies on airspace arrangements and international arrangements. Operators reported that the requirement to provide the same information to be compliant with the licensing procedures of numerous different government agencies and bodies proved complex and time consuming to navigate.
- Operators and satellite providers repeatedly raised concerns over liabilities and insurance being disproportionate, burdensome and an impediment to progress towards launch.
- An understandable lack of familiarity with space launch in some European countries, hampered the negotiation of government-to-government arrangements designed to authorise the agreement of common practice and tactical/operational mechanisms used amongst airspace regulators and in the marine domain.
The last item is most interesting, because it suggests some of the delay was imposed by other European governments. One can’t help wondering if these difficulties were intended to stymie for political reasons success in space in the UK, so that competiting operations in Spain, France, Germany, and Scandinavian might have an advantage.
Regardless, the report makes a lot of good recommendations, all of which however will be difficult to implement quickly because of the number of government bureaucracies involved. All will work to defend their turf, making any political decisions challenging. The only real fix would be an elected leadership willing to cut the gordian knot, something that does not appear to exist in Great Britain.
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
Where did SpaceX do its first launches?
Someplace very isolated in the Pacific.
This kind of mindset has been eating the British economy alive for decades, and it is why it has been so easy to lampoon in the arts, cf. Douglas Adams’ Vogons, Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL, The Thick of It, etc.
It was too much to hope that the rocket industry would be any exception.
GeorgeC: SpaceX’s only 4 launches were from Kwajelein Atoll in the far southwestern Pacific. Our version of the administrative state tried to pull the same suffocating tactics with the embryonic SpaceX by denying them timely access to the launch pad they wanted to build at the sprawling Vandenberg AFB on the west coast north of LA. I highly recommend Eric Berger’s excellent book Liftoff which chronicles those early struggles that almost bankrupted the nascent company, made all that much harder by the government’s roadblock. (To be fair, there were a few early allies in the Air Force and government that aided SpaceX at Kwaj and later Vandenberg)
Imagine where we would be today in spaceflight if the government had gotten its wish to make SpaceX disappear.
Robert, this simply shows how much further the grip of the university-certified State has run in Britain than here.
These regulations are essentially a demand for “Waterfall” program management in all things aerospace in Britain. It is another way to prop up the university certification industry.
It comes, again, from the 75 years-long demand of the clerking class that more jobs be found for them inside Britain as the Empire was phased out. If they could no longer be paid to order around people in “The Empire”, then jobs must be found for them ordering people around in Sutherland, Cornwall, SaxaVord, etc.