Baby Space Shuttle biz chases dreams at Spaceport Cornwall

Sierra Nevada Corporation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Spaceport Cornwall aimed at landing its Dream Chaser spacecraft on a strip in the southwest county of England. While the MoU is all about future collaboration opportunities, John Roth, veep for business development at Sierra Space, told The Register, " …

[Anonymous Coward]

So if they have a craft capable of carrying people, could they not, in theory, fling them into low earth orbit from California and deposit them in the UK an hour later?

[LogicGate]

Juist to be a bit pedantic: That would not be a "low earth orbit", but rather (as my lecturer in orbital mechanics put it) a "piss-arch". Which is a nice term to keep in mind, when Bezos & Branson et al go on their expensive excursions.

[bernmeister]

I've never heard of a ballistic trajectory described that way but technically it is correct, just a bit shorter.

[LogicGate]

The actual term used was "een pissboogen"..

..but yes.. most books will use "ballistic trajectory" in order to avoud controversy :)

Beer or sample? ----->

[Sceptic Tank]

Plural singular

Dutch is hard, eh?

[MJI]

Bezo v Branson

Elon

Please ride one of your capsules to orbit to shut those two up!

[phuzz]

Re: Bezo v Branson

...and don't necessarily come back.

[steelpillow]

Sub-orbital geekology

@Def Yes they could run a point-to-point passenger service, though sub-orbital throughout makes a lot more technical and economic sense. However as it stands, the design is far from optimal for such a service; very few passengers, vertical launch spilling their coffee, and a lot of unnecessary fully-orbital crud tacked on.

Virgin's two-stage spaceplane would be a lot more suitable, as it already meets those objections. Not sure if it has the range, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then spend a couple of hours waiting for solitary customs and border control officer at Newquay to get back from town where he's been fetching some milk for his other role running the coffee shop.

[Spherical Cow]

E'll be there drekly.

[Paul Crawford]

I am surprised they are not looking to RAF Machrihanish for landing as it has a 3km runway and was one of the emergency landing options during the Space Shuttle program.

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture any post apocolyptic zombie movie, e.g. 28 days later. That's basically Kintyre.

[Korev]

> Picture any post apocolyptic zombie movie, e.g. 28 days later. That's basically Kintyre.

Or Newquay in the summer

[Paul Cooper]

Machrihanish has abysmal transport connections - no rail, and it's at the end of a very long, rural, single-carriageway road. And while I think the "zombie apocalypse" description is a bit OTT, it's certainly in the right direction. There is a deep water port nearby at Campbelltown, though.

[Tom 7]

You've not tried leaving Cornwall on changeover Friday then? Only too 3 hours to get 20 miles a couple of weeks ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on google maps satellite view the runway looks a bit shorter now. I'm not a pilot but I'm assuming the big Xs on part of the runway (and the general rundown look) mean "don't land on this bit!"

[Boothy]

Looks like there is no RAF Machrihanish, not for a good few years now. Looks like it closed down in 1995 (as an active base) with the MOD taking over for a while to keep it in a ready state, and the runway being used for commercial aircraft from 1996.

Seems the locals bough the site from the MOD for £1 in 2012, and use it for local businesses, with the runway being leased out to be part of Campbeltown Airport.

As others have mentioned, a quick look on sat images, and looks like about 40% of the runway has been abandoned, presumably just not needed for the short haul aircraft now using the place.

[bernmeister]

This all seems like pi in the sky quite honestly. An MoU with Dream Chaser for landing is probably going to to generate as much business as the shuttle auxiliary landing sites did. The same goes for the deal with Virgin Orbit. At the moment the equipment needed for ground support of Virgin Orbit is large and located in California. Rather than build another at Newquay, a transportable system is intended that will fit inside a cargo version of a front loading 747. Both companies seem to have options that simply need a large runway and not much more. The only other attraction Newquay has is sea, sand, beer and pasties. I love the place but I am not sure about the rocket men. I think there biggest source of revenue could be from a visitor center with replicas of all that might happen at the space port. A bit like a mini version of the Kourou visitor center but more like a wish list.

[Howard Sway]

Who needs a spaceport?

Send it to Heathrow. It will just need to circle round London for half an hour whilst waiting to land, after which the astronauts can easily catch a train into the city and take in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical or two.

[Mike-H]

For a novice, why would they do this rather than just land back in California?

[Boothy]

It says it in the article "Customers on the UK side of the Atlantic can therefore get hold of their experiments should the Dream Chaser touch down on the lengthy Cornwall landing strip."

Presumably more important if the returning science is time sensitive, such as biological samples etc. Otherwise they'd likely just land in the US and ship the experiments over to the UK via regular aircraft.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Why not land back in California?

It could be an emergency landing site, following some incident after launch that leaves the vehicle to far downrange over the US or the Atlantic to return to California, but unable to reach orbit, so in need of an handy landing site quickly.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Why not land back in California?

"It could be an emergency landing site, following some incident after launch that leaves the vehicle to far downrange over the US or the Atlantic to return to California, but unable to reach orbit, so in need of an handy landing site quickly."

Being unmanned and not operated by military or emergency service, won't they need special permissions and exemptions to operate their space going drone above 400' and out of line of sight?

[Tom 7]

Is a memoram of understanding

just big words for hype?

[Alien8]

It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

The thing that makes me think this will never happen is this....They want to land a big space ship in Cornwall, take the small payload out, deliver that to UK customers, then ship the big ship back to the USA.

In case you haven't worked it out, why not land the big space ship in the USA and ship the small payload to UK customers?

[Boothy]

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

It's not that big. The cargo version has folding wings, so that it can fit within a 5m fairing, so it can be used on more rockets (the cancelled crew version didn't have folding wings).

At 5m it should fit inside something like a Boeing 747 Dreamlifter.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

Or even easily inside a A300 Beluga.

According to the wiki of all knowledge

"Cargo hold – volume 1,500 m3 (53,000 cu ft), 37.7 m long × 7.04 m wide × 7.08 m tall"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

Do you not remember when they brought Enterprise over to Stansted? Will always remember it flying over school on the back of its 747 and everyone looking up at it gobsmacked.

[RobThBay]

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

Or when the Moonraker shuttle was brought over in a James Bond movie (don't remember the movie title).

[MJI]

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

Moonraker film was called Moonraker