Tag: Space Hub Sutherland

Billionaire who fought Sutherland spaceport now owns at least half of competing Saxavord spaceport

9:46 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Anders Povlsen, the Danish billionaire who aggressively fought the establishment of the Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland, where he owns lots of land, has increased his holding of the competing Saxavord spaceport on one of the Shetland Islands, raising his share of ownership there to at least 50%.

Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen has increased his stake in Shetland Space Centre via his company, Wild Ventures Ltd, which now owns more than half of its shares. New filings with Companies House also show that Lise Kaae, the chief executive of Mr Povlsen’s investment firm, Heartland, has been appointed as a director at the spaceport.

Mr Povlsen, who made his fortune in retail fashion and is reported to be Scotland’s largest landowner, has been involved in the spaceport since 2020 when Wild Ventures Ltd invested £1.5m.

Povlsen had for years aggressively opposed Sutherland, expressing that opposition with repeated lawsuits that caused years of regulatory delays. Those delays in turn impacted Sutherland’s biggest customer, the rocket startup Orbex, which had a fifty year lease on a launchpad and had hoped to start launches of its Prime rocket in 2022. In December 2024, with no sign it would get a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority anytime soon, Orbex essentially gave up on Sutherland, announcing suddenly it was switching launch operations to Saxaford.

It now appears Povlsen’s lawfare effort has born fruit, which I think explains why he has now suddenly increased his ownership share in Saxavord

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Orbex scouts Saxaford in advance of first launch

9:25 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

Though no details have been released, a team from the British rocket startup Orbex has arrived at the Saxaford spaceport in the Shetland Islands to begin preparations for the company’s first launch there, now planned to occur before the end of this year.

Originally Orbex was going to do its launches from the United Kingdom’s other proposed spaceport in Sutherland on the northern coast of Scotland. It had obtained a 50-year-lease to build its own dedicated launch facility, had built its rocket manufacturing facility nearby, and had originally hoped to do the first test orbital launch of its Prime rocket in 2022.

Three years later the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had still not issued Orbex or Sutherland the necessary launch licenses. Faced with bankruptcy if it didn’t launch soon, in December the company announced it was switching its first launch to Saxaford, where the CAA had completed spaceport licensing. It hoped the CAA would thus be able to give it a launch license quickly. We shall see.

Note that the news is slow today. As much as I want to post lots of stuff, I can’t if nothing of significance appears to be happening.

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United Kingdom awards rocket startup Orbex $25 million

9:29 am

The government of the United Kingdom has made a sudden and unexpected $25 million grant to the British rocket startup Orbex, which recently announced it was abandoning its launchpad at the Sutherland spaceport and switching to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands.

While the UK Government has supported Orbex through grants awarded via the European Space Agency’s Boost! programme, the £20 million investment appears to represent the state acquiring a stake in the company and its future. This signals a significant show of support from the government as the company gears up to compete in the European Launcher Challenge.

Channeling former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle declared that the government’s backing of Orbex would enable the launch of “British rockets carrying British satellites from British soil.”

It seems to me that this cash award is less an investment in the company and more a kind of guilt payment by the United Kingdom government because the red tape of its bureaucracy, the Civil Aviation Authority, prevented Orbex from launching at Sutherland for almost three years, delays that eventually forced the switch to Saxavord, which after its own long red tape delays finally has its license approvals not yet issued to Sutherland.

Orbex has probably indicated to the government that these delays have caused it significant cash flow problems, similar to what happened to Virgin Orbit where red tape delays eventually drove it to bankruptcy. The company also probably told the government it needed extra cash to prepare the launchpad at Saxavord for its rocket, money it had already spent at Sutherland and no longer had.

Thus, this $25 million government grant. The UK government realized that if a second rocket company went belly-up due to its red tape, it would likely end forever any chance of getting any rocket company from considering launching from the United Kingdom.

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Orbex gives up on the Sutherland spaceport, switches to SaxaVord

9:27 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

In a very sudden decision, the rocket startup Orbex, based in Great Britain, has “paused” its long-delayed work to develop a launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport in northern Scotland and instead decided to launch its first rockets from the competing SaxaVord spaceport on the Shetland islands.

Orbex says it is halting construction work on the £20 million spaceport and instead is mothballing the project, which has received a £14.6 million public investment package. The space company, which was to have made the Sutherland Spaceport its home port, will now launch its rockets carrying commercial satellites from another north spaceport – SaxaVord on Unst, Shetland.

According to the company’s CEO, it will retain its 50-year lease at Sutherland to give it “flexibility to increase launch capacity in the future.”

The company had originally hoped to launch its Prime rocket from Sutherland in 2022, but has been faced with red tape from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which has still not issued a launch licence, even though the application was submitted almost three years ago. Orbex has also faced lawfare opposition from local activists as well as a major local landowner, billionaire Anders Povlsen, who is also a major investor in SaxaVord.

That last detail might help explain this decision. In private talks Orbex might have learned that the red tape and opposition would disappear if it switched to SaxaVord. The timing is also suggestive, as only a few days ago construction started on a new spaceport in Scotland, located on the island of North Uist.

All told, Orbex might have decided that the stars were aligned against it at Sutherland, and it was better to move. It now hopes to complete the first test launch of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord next year.

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Local billionaire landowner renews his oppposition to the Sutherland spaceport

10:58 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

An effort by the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland to place a tracking dish on a nearby peak — where other telecommunication dishes are already installed — is now being fought by local billionaire landowner Anders Holch Povlsen, who had previously tried and failed to stop construction of the spaceport entirely.

The spaceport’s main customer, the rocket startup Orbex, has already experienced endless red tape from the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). It applied for a launch license in February 2022, and almost two-and-a-half years later still has not gotten an approval. It had previously announced a first launch that year, and has been stymied since, not only by the CAA but by local authorities who have demanded it make many changes to its construction plans.

Povlsen, who has himself invested in the competing Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, has repeatedly acted to block Sutherland, so far with no success. This new suit is especially absurd — claiming the new dish would harm the local landscape — which is why the local councils appear ready to reject it.
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Sutherland spaceport reconfigures design in effort to satisfy environmental concerns

9:57 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Sutherland spaceport being built in the north of Scotland has announced plans to shrink its size in order to satisfy environmental concerns, likely raised by the many bureaucrats in the United Kingdom that have to approve its spaceport license.

Orbex is now consulting with the local community on proposed changes, including a smaller launch pad, to better protect the surrounding environment. There will also be smaller access roads, and the size of the integration facility, where rockets are assembled before launch, is to be reduced.

The company said: “These changes will make the building footprint smaller, leading to a reduction in peat disturbance and a lower impact on the groundwater ecosystem. The visual impact of the site will also be reduced, and there will be less disturbance to local watercourse crossings, with mammal migration paths widened to better preserve the natural environment.

Orbex has signed a 50-year lease to use this spaceport, and has been building its Prime rocket in a facility nearby. It had hoped to complete a first launch in 2023, but that is clearly not going to happen. It had applied for a launch license in February 2022, but apparently the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom has still not issued it, almost two years later.

Much of the environmental opposition to the Sutherland spaceport was initially instigated by a billionaire who had invested in the competing Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands. Though his lawsuit was dismissed in August 2021, this does not mean that the opposition by him and others has ceased.

Overall, it appears that like at Saxavord in Shetland, work at Sutherland has significantly slowed in recent months. It appears both are being blocked for regulatory reasons, delays that once again provide an opportunity for the spaceports being developed in Norway and Sweden.

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Orbex signs 50-year lease at Sutherland spaceport

9:03 am

The British startup rocket company Orbex has signed a 50-year lease to operate its own launchpad at the Space Hub Sutherland spaceport in Scotland.

The company will lease Space Hub Sutherland from a local development agency for an initial period of 50 years with an option to extend for a further 25 years. Orbex will soon commence construction at the 10-acre launch site on the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland. The bulk of the construction work will be contracted out to technology solutions company Jacobs, which also does a lot of work for NASA.

The company hopes to launch its Prime rocket in ’23. At present it is testing launch operations of a prototype on its launchpad. All told, Orbex has raised a little over $100 million in private investment capital.

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Rocket startup Orbex raises another $45 million

9:22 am

The British-based rocket startup company Orbex announced today that it has successfully raised another $45 million in private investment capital, adding to the $63 million it had previously raised.

Orbex is developing Prime, a small launch vehicle designed to place up to 180 kilograms into low Earth orbit. The vehicle, built by the company at a factory in Forres, Scotland, will launch initially from Space Hub Sutherland, a new launch site under development in northern Scotland.

“With Orbex, we will have a rocket assembled in Scotland, launching from Scotland and likely transporting satellites built in Scotland into orbit,” said Nicola Douglas, executive director of the Scottish National Investment Bank, in a statement. “We’re building a full end-to-end commercial space ecosystem in Scotland and we’re proud to play our part in this funding round.”

The company is targeting 2023 for its first launch from the new spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland.

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Orbex applies for UK launch license

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: The British smallsat rocket company Orbex has now submitted its application for a launch license to the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The press release does not mention a launch date, but it does state that ground tests of Orbex’s Prime rocket, designed to launch smallsats, are about to begin.

The Orbex ‘Prime’ rocket is soon to be tested on the Orbex LP1 launch platform at a facility in Kinloss, close to the Orbex headquarters in Forres, where full ‘dress rehearsals’ of launch procedures will take place.

Actual launches will take place at Space Hub Sutherland in Scotland. A previous announcement in 2020 had suggested the first launch would occur in ’22. Whether that date can still be met is unclear, but without doubt Orbex is moving forward towards launch.

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