Virgin Galactic Wants UK Launch Site's

Virgin Galactic Wants UK Launch Site's

Source Link: newsvote.bbc.co.uk

Space company Virgin Galactic has urged the government to allow it to launch passenger flights from the UK.
It said if the government failed to support the project with the necessary legislation, then "we will lose a massive opportunity".

MoD bases in Scotland and Cornwall would be suitable sites, it said.

Virgin Galactic, part of entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson's empire, plans to start commercial flights as early as 2008 after testing this year.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I hope this thing takes off (pun intended).

This could very well be the next big leap in transportation. If a shuttle were to reach a high enough altitude, it could wait for Earth to rotate on its axis, and then fly back down to Earth to the designated country, using Earth's rotation to bring the country to them, rather them to the country of destination.

Umm... what happened to the New Mexico deal?

I am not a rocket scientist , nor do i play one on TEEVEE , but are most existing launch sites as close to the equator as possible ?

i know the " sealaunch " barge sails south till its off mexico before launch - because it requires less thrust to get a given payload to orbit from a more southerly location - in short the cost of sailing the barge is recoped in the saving on the lauch rocket

thats also why the ESA lauch facility is in GUYANNA , not europe

so why does branson think that he can launch from either 50N [ CORNWALL ] or 56N [ SCOTLAND ] ???

He'll still be able to get up, it'll just lower payload and increase fuel costs. It's a mystery why he'd want to increase his costs, unless he want's to benefit the economies of those locations with this project.

Also these shots are only for SS2 right? Which will be SUborbital so maybe that is not such a consideration.

[edit on 23-2-2007 by sardion2000]