Abstract
Spaceports are critical for the commercial space transportation operations of orbital and sub-orbital flights. They provide the necessary facilities, ground control and runway/launch pads and in the future are also expected to host passenger training facilities, visitor centres, hotels and other types of attractions (Pelt 2011). The expected growth of orbital and sub-orbital flights encourages the emergence commercial spaceports throughout the USA and now in Europe. Spaceports are the sites for launching orbital and sub-orbital vehicles in space. They will offer facilities for vertical and horizontal takeoff and landing. Spaceport sites are supposed to integrate launch vehicle components, fuel, and maintain vehicles as well as payloads into the vehicles (FAA 2016, The Annual Compedium of Commercial Space Transportation: 2016).
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Notes
- 1.
Facilities include terminal hangers, propellant facilities, payload integration facilities, fuel handling, vehicle integration/checkout and others.
- 2.
Certain spaceports like the Swedish Space Port offer the possibility to watch the Northern Lights.
- 3.
Initially the port was constructed to host two WhiteKnightTwo aircrafts and five Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo spacecrafts.
References
America, S. (2016). About Us. Retrieved June 14, 2016, from Spaceport America: http://spaceportamerica.com/about-us/
FAA. (2016). The annual compedium of commercial space transportation: 2016. FAA.
Pelt, M. v. (2011). Space tourism. In S. Tkatchova (Ed.), Space-based technologies and commercialized devlopment (pp. 164–177). Hershey: IGI Global.
Seedhouse, E. (2014). Spaceports. In E. Seedhouse (Ed.), Suborbital industry on the edge of space (pp. 113–124). Springer Parxis Books in Space Exploration.
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Tkatchova, S. (2018). Spaceports. In: Emerging Space Markets. Space Technology Library, vol 35. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55669-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55669-6_8
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