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          Yuri Milner is a billionaire Russian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist. He is the founder of an investment firm originally named Digital Sky Technologies which is now called Mail.ru Group. He also founded DST Global. Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Flipkart, Spotify, ZocDoc, Groupon, JD.com, Planet Labs, Xiaomi, OlaCabs, Alibaba, and many other global technology companies.
          In 2015, Milner created the Breakthrough Initiatives. BI is a major scientific project to investigate the question of the existence of life in the Universe. When he announced the initiative at the Royal Society in London, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy and Ann Dryan were in attendance.
          The first initiative called Breakthrough Listen will commit one hundred million dollars over ten years to the ” most comprehensive and sensitive search ever undertaken for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.” The Green Bank, Parks and Lick observatories will look for radio and/or laser signals from the nearest million stars, the nearest one hundred galaxies as well as the plane and center of the Milky Way. All information gathered will be available to the public.
         The second initiative will be Breakthrough Message. An annual prize of one million dollars will be awarded to the author of a digital message representing humanity and Earth that could be decoded by another civilization. The messages will not be broadcast until after there has been a global discussion of the ethics and safety of sending such messages to the cosmos.
        The third initiative called Breakthrough Starshot will be a one hundred million dollar project to create proof-of concept for a light sail spacecraft fleet capable of traveling to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system. The spacecraft are called StarChips and are about the size of a cell phone. They contain cameras, photo thrusters, plutonium batteries, and computers. The fleet will travel at twenty percent of the speed of light or about sixty million miles per second which will mean that it will take about twenty years for the fleet to travel the approximately four and four tenths light years to Alpha Centauri.
       It is estimated that actually creating and launching the fleet of a thousand  tiny spacecraft would take decades and billions of dollars. Once a mothership delivered the spacecraft to Earth orbit, they would be deployed and the light sails of each would unfold. Then an incredibly powerful array of Earth based lasers would fire and within a few minutes accelerate the spacecraft to twenty percent of the speed of light. The lasers can only maintain the required tight beam for the first six hundred thousand miles of the journey leaving the spacecraft to coast from then on.
        Those spacecraft that survived the twenty plus year flight to the Alpha Centauri star system would fly through the system, taking pictures. Then the pictures would be beamed back towards Earth. It would take over four years for the pictures to reach Earth. So the whole mission would take about twenty four years.
        Milner, Stephen Hawking and Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg are members of the board of directors for the mission. Milner estimates that it will take up to twenty years to obtain funding for and to construct the spacecraft and lasers. Now in his fifties, Milner hopes to be able to live to see the launch of man’s first mission to the stars.

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          I blogged last time about the success of SpaceX in landing a Falcon 9 first stage on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. That was not their only recent “first.” SpaceX has been shipping cargo to the International Space Station with their Falcon 9 launch vehicles and their Dragon spacecraft and they recently delivered a very special package to the ISS. 
          Construction of space station modules in space is complicated, time consuming and expensive. All materials have to be launched into orbit first which is costly. Then they have to be assembled by astronauts moving around in spacesuits which is complex and exhausting. Better ways have to be found to create habitable spaces for astronauts working on space stations.
         NASA has been developing the concept of inflatable modular habitats since the 1960s. There was a TransHab project to create such a module in the late 1990s but the project was cancelled. The Bigelow Aerospace company purchased the NASA patents from the TransHab project and went on to develop their Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, two of which were launched into orbit for testing in 2006 and 2007. NASA returned to consideration of inflatable modules in 2010. It reviewed a number of designs for attachment to the ISS including the BEAM. In 2012, Bigelow was awarded a contract from NASA to build the BEAM.
          Last week, a SpaceX Dragon delivered a BEAM to the ISS. This expandable room with  be temporarily attached to the ISS. It will not be deployed until May. The module will be part of the ISS for the next two years.
 
        The purpose of the BEAM project is to demonstrate
·      Launch and deployment of a commercial an inflatable module
·      Folding and package techniques for an inflatable module
·      Radiation protection capabilities of an inflatable module
·      Performance of such things as thermal, structural, mechanical durability, and leak performance of an inflatable module
·      Safe deployment and operation of an inflatable module
     The BEAM is constructed with two metal bulkheads, an aluminum structure and multiple layers of soft fabric. It has an internal restraint and bladder system but no windows or internal power. It weighs three thousand pounds. It packs into a space about six feet long and about eight feet in diameter. When inflated, it will be thirteen feet long and ten feet in diameter. It will be pressurized to fifteen pounds per square inch is equivalent to the air pressure at sea level and the same as the ISS.
       Astronauts will enter the module several times a year to obtain sensor data, check for microbial growth on surfaces, change out radiation monitors and check the module to see how well it can handle bombardment by space debris and solar radiation. NASA scientists have concluded that materials such as polyethylene with high levels of hydrogen can reduce radiation better than metals such as aluminum. The exact composition of the soft fabric in the BEAM is proprietary but it is known that they are using vinyl polymer foams in the module which are commonly used in laboratories for radiation shielding.
Bigelow Expandable Activity Module:

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          One of the major costs of space exploration and exploitation is the one-time use of launch vehicles. Although some first stage boosters have been recovered from ocean landings and towed back to land for dismantling, this does not solve the problem. Popular depictions of space travel have shown rocket ships landing vertically for decades but it turns out that this is very difficult and, up until recently, has not been achieved although rockets have been carrying payloads into orbit for almost sixty years.
          SpaceX is the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk. It has been delivering cargo to the International Space Station in the past few years with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Recently the company has been working on landing a Falcon 9 first stage both on dry land and on an unmanned barge at sea.
          The landing barge has a platform that measures three hundred feet by one hundred and seventy feet. There are four diesel engines that can pivot the barge horizontally that provides full three hundred and sixty degrees of control and great stability. The barge can maintain position to within ten feet. The barge is capable of autonomous maneuvering and navigation with GPS but can also be controlled from a nearby manned support vessel. There are sensors and cameras on the barge so technicians can monitor the landing attempts. After a successful landing, the Falcon 9 first stage is welded to the deck of the barge and stabilized with reinforcing struts for the trip back to port. There is a barge for use in the Atlantic Ocean that docks at Port of Jackson or Port Canaveral and a Pacific barge that docks at the Port of Los Angeles.
        In January and April of last year, SpaceX failed to land a Falcon 9 first stage successfully on the barge. In one case, the Falcon 9 first stage came in too fast. In another case, the Falcon 9 first stage almost landed safely but then one of the four landing struts collapsed and the rocket tipped over and exploded. In June of last year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 exploded on a cargo run to the ISS and launches were halted for six months.
         Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos was able to land successfully land part of their New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle a couple of times recently. The first such successful landing was carried out in November of 2015. The New Shepard vehicle is small, lighter and travels at a much lower velocity than the Falcon 9 first stage. The vertical landing of a Falcon 9 first stage is much more difficult. In December of 2015, Space X successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage on dry land at Cape Canaveral.
         On April 8 of 2016, a Falcon 9 first stage came down out of the sky and landed on the drone barge successfully. This successful landing demonstrated that SpaceX is capable of landing the Falcon 9 on dry land and on a barge at sea. The first stage of a Falcon 9 costs sixty million dollars. It only costs two hundred thousand dollars for fuel the first stage. Of course, there will be refitting costs above and beyond the fuel costs in order to ready a Falcon 9 first stage for reuse but the reduction in cost due to reuse should be at least one tenth of the current cost. In time, vertical landings will be normal and the cost of launching payloads to orbit will drop significantly as launch vehicles can be recovered and reused instead of being thrown away.
SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage landing successfully on barge at sea:

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       One of the applications that is being considered for spacecraft is tourism and transportation. Last week, the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization called for the development of regulations for space travel in the next five years. The ICAO Council President told an aerospace symposium in Abu Dhabi that his organization, “recognizes that sub-orbital and outer space flights will foster new tourism and transport markets, and that investments in related research and development remain at a very healthy level, ” and, he added, “Personally, as an engineer, I am very excited to see the dream and theory of normalized space flight now becoming such a tangible reality.”
        Virgin Galactic is working on SpaceShipTwo which will have two pilots and can carry up to six passengers on a suborbital flight to sixty two miles altitude which is recognized as the “boundary of space.” Another aircraft called WhiteKNightTwo will carry SpaceShipTwo up to fifty thousand feet and then SpaceShipTwo’s engine will kick in to carry the passengers up to the edge of space. Following that, the craft will make an unpowered glide back to land on a runway. Hundreds of people have put down deposits of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each to ride SpaceShipTwo which will take off from Spaceport American in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic hopes to begin flights in 2017 and anticipates up to a hundred thousand passengers  by 2020.
         Blue Origins is working on a rocket that will take off vertically to carry a capsule with six passengers on suborbital flights at the edge of space. The Blue Origins craft will land vertically at the launch site after the flight. Blue Origins has already successfully landed the same type of rocket twice. The craft will be launched from a facility in Florida. Details of and schedules for space tourism have not been released.
        XCOR Aerospace has been working on a rocket plane call the Lynx for years. This rocket plane is intended to be flown multiple times in a day just like a regular airplane. It can only carry one passenger in addition to the pilot. The Lynx will take off from a runway, go straight up sixty miles to the edge of space and then glide back to the runway to land. The company says that it is making steady progress the developing the space plane. The plane has four small light weight engines that burn kerosene as the main fuel. It is a small craft with a wingspan of about thirty feet. The rocket plane is being developed at and will be flown from a facility in Midland, Texas. XCOR claims that more than three hundred and fifty clients have signed up for flights. The price had been a hundred thousand dollars but was raised to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars as of January 1st, 2016. The company has not announced when it will begin flights.
         A company called World View has a different approach than the other three just mentioned.  They plan to use a helium balloon to carry a capsule to about one hundred thousand feet. While the nineteen mile altitude does not qualify as reaching the edge of space, it will still provided a spectacular view of the Earth without the dangers and G forces involved in rocket launches. Unlike the three rocket based systems above which will only provide a few minutes at maximum altitude before returning to Earth, the World View capsule will remain aloft for up to two hours and have a bathroom. The capsule descends when helium is vented from the balloon. At fifty thousand feet, the balloon is released and the capsule glides back to Earth on a “parawing”. The company will launch the balloons from Spaceport Tuscon. No date or price has been announced for rides yet.
         To date, only a few wealthy tourists have paid millions of dollars for a ride to the International Space Station aboard a Russian spacecraft. It is hoped that Spaceport American which cost almost a two hundred and fifty million dollars to construct in a remote area of New Mexico will become a center for space tourism. Time will tell whether space tourism is a viable industry or just a fevered dream of space enthusiasts.
Spaceport America terminal:

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        I have discussed a number of actual and theoretical engines to be used for spacecraft in this blog. There is a category of space drives that I have not discussed because they are wild speculation about designs that in some way defy well known physical laws which makes their construction and use highly improbable to say the least. Lately, I have been reading about some experiments that some researchers say could lead to an extraordinarily efficient drive system. I have held off posting about this proposed space drive but finally decided that I should say something about it because of all the publicity that  the research has been getting lately.
         The basic premise of engines used to propel spacecraft is that something has to be thrown out the back of the engine to cause the craft to move forward.  It can be hot gases from explosions. It can be cold gas from canisters. It can be steam. It can be ions propelled by electrical fields. But they are all just examples of action and reaction from Newtonian physics. Now we are hearing about a process that is supposed to provide thrust with nothing being expelled from the engine.
         In 2001, Roger Shawyer, an aerospace engineer, designed the EmDrive. Since then he and his company, Satellite Propulsion Research, have been promoting the concept. Guido Fetta, a chemical engineer designed the Cannae Drive which is based on the same ideas as the EmDrive. These proposed engines supposedly produce thrust without the consumption of a propellant.
        Other teams of researchers have built prototypes of these engine designs. The institutions involved include Northwestern Polytechnical University in China, a NASA Eagleworks laboratory in the U.S. and Dresden University of Technology in Germany. Each of these teams reported a small amount of thrust generated by their engines but the German team said that it was within the range of experimental error. Researchers continue to work on the engines to eliminate errors and answer critics complaints.
       The basic design consists of a closed metal chamber into which is injected microwaves. The chamber is a cylinder that is bigger at one end than the other. Shawyer claims that a standing wave interference pattern of microwaves is generated in the chamber. This setup could be called an RF cavity resonator. He says that the “stress energy” of space is altered inside the cavity by the effect of the geometry on the interference wave pattern. One researcher suggests that the standing wave is passing out of the chamber. If all the microwaves stay in the chamber, there is no conventional theory of physics that can explain how any thrust could be generated.
       The magazine New Scientist published an article by Shawyer about a second version of his engine in 2006. There was a harsh backlash from critics who said that the magazine was not clear enough that the claims Shawyer made violated well-known physical laws such as conservation of momentum. The magazine apologized and printed letters from critics of Shawyer.
       To date, these prototype RF cavity resonator engines show tiny amounts of thrust insufficient for use in spacecraft. Shawyer and other promoters of these engines will have to significantly raise their output before they can be of any use in space, if that is possible. Critics are unlikely to be impressed unless some theoretical framework can be developed that could explain exactly how these engines could work. On the other hand, reality does not have to adhere to our theories and if a working EmDrive with a useful amount of thrust can be constructed and demonstrated, then it will be used whether we understand it or not.
Northwestern Polytechnical University prototype EmDrive:
 

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          Last week, I blogged about using lasers and space sails for the propulsion of spacecraft. This week, I am going to talk about using nuclear fission for space propulsion. I have mentioned nuclear fission propulsion engines in the past. The Soviet Union was very interested in nuclear engines for space travel and created a functional nuclear engine after a twenty year program that started in 1960 and ended in 1980. It was never used to propel any spacecraft. In the U.S., Project Orion was a design for a spacecraft that used nuclear propulsion that was never built. The Russians are currently working on a new nuclear fission propulsion system.
      The most recent Russian nuclear propulsion project was launched in 2010 with a budget of about two hundred and seventy five million dollars. It was part of the Russian space program planning for the period up to 2020. The goal was to develop a nuclear fission-based propulsion system that would provide much greater economic efficiency by increasing the amount of electricity available on a spacecraft by ten times. It is hoped that this will allow deep space mission of greater duration and distance. The funding was split among a number of different organizations and facilities.
       The new system is to include  “high-conversion circuits , a high temperature compact fast reactor with a gas cooling system, nuclear and radiation safety features for in all phases of operation, high temperature turbine and compact heat exchangers with a decade of design life, high-speed electric generators with high power converters, high efficiency fuel cells, and a propulsion system based on high-performance powerful ionic electric propulsion.”
      In the this new Russian system, a nuclear reactor generates up to four megawatts of electricity which heats a gas that then drives a turbine. The turbine generates electricity with high efficiency which is used to charge fuel cells. An ion propulsion system then uses the electricity available to send charged ions of xenon gas out the back of the space craft. There will be six main engines and eight smaller engines for roll control and course correction.
      Ion propulsion is not as immediately powerful as chemical rockets but it operates continuously for long periods of time. This is much more efficient than chemical rockets and it requires much less fuel. Unlike current rocket engines which fire intensely for short periods and then shut off leaving the spacecraft to coast for long periods, the new propulsion system would be able to maneuver, accelerate and decelerate during the flight.
      The head of the Russian Rosatom nuclear corporation just announced that Russia may test a prototype of their new nuclear propulsion engine for space exploration as soon as 2018. Conventional rockets would take more than six months to reach Mars and would not be able to carry enough fuel to make the return trip. The new Russian nuclear propulsion system should be able to reach Mars in about six weeks and return to Earth without refueling.        
      Traditional rocket engines and traditional fuels are reaching the end of their utility for deep space missions and the Russians are betting that nuclear propulsions systems will be the next “big thing” in space propulsion. The U.S. recently tested the first use of ion engines in orbit and they are being considered for U.S. deep space missions.
Artist’s concept of a Russian spacecraft with nuclear driven ion propulsion:

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          Crowd funding is a new approach to raising funds for projects. Inventors and entrepreneurs go directly to the public thru websites and promotional videos in order to raise money. Supporters of some small satellite projects have already used this approach in the U.S. such as the SkyCube project to design, build and launch a small cube about four inches on a side into orbit. This satellite is intended to take low resolution images and to broadcast message back to Earth. The project successfully raised over one hundred thousand dollars and launched their satellite. Now some students in Russia have turned to one of these websites for money for their satellite projects.
         A group of students at the University of Mechanical Engineering in Moscow have designed a satellite. They put up a promotional video on a Russian crowd funding website called Boom Starter. The website allows interested parties to donate between five dollars and four thousand dollars to the student project. The more you donate, the more access you have to the student group and reports on the progress of the satellite project. The person who donates the most will be invited to watch the satellite launch in person. To date, the students have raised twenty seven thousand dollars from Boomstarter and other sources. This money was sufficient to build the satellite.
         The satellite the students have designed and built is called “Mayak” which is the Russian word for “Beacon.” First a canister about the size of a shoebox was built to contain the electronics and a deployable tetrahedral metalized film balloon that will have a surface area of one hundred and seventy five square feet. It is to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome into low Earth orbit on a Soyuz-2 rocket in the spring of 2016. Once in orbit, the balloon will be inflated and the balloon will be the brightness object ever launched into orbit. It should be about the same brightness as the planet Venus. Currently, the brightest manmade object in the night sky is the International Space Station which is about one third the brightness of Venus.
       If the mission is successful, then the students intend to write an app that anyone in the world can download. The app will let people determine exactly where in the sky they can see Mayak at any time of night.
        The students say that beyond the goal of proving that a group of students can design, build and launch a satellite, they have other goals. Obviously they also hope that the satellite successfully deploys and becomes the brightest object in the night sky. And finally, they want to get people excited about space and space exploration.
         If the students are successful successfully in launching Mayak, they have another research project that they are interested in. They want to launch another satellite and then bring it back to Earth with aerodynamic braking. This will permit them to study aerodynamic braking and the density of the atmosphere in low Earth orbit.
Artist’s concept of Mayak in orbit:

Mayak.jpg

          The basic idea of using a light beam to power a sail attached to a spacecraft with photon bombardment has been around a long time. Eugene Sanger was a Hungarian aerospace engineer. Between 1961 and 1963, he was designing airplane propulsions systems for Junkers, a major German aircraft engine manufacturer. During his time at Junkers, he came up with the idea of using light pressure to push against a sail to power a spacecraft. Also in the 1960s, a prominent Hungarian physicist wrote about laser based space propulsion.
          In the 1970s, Robert Forward, an American physicist developed the idea of using a giant laser to propel a tiny space probe to another star system. He wrote a novel called Rocheworld in which a manned spacecraft was propelled to another solar system with a huge laser. In 1974, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle published The Mote in God’s Eye, a science fiction novel in which a race of aliens used a giant laser to power one of their spacecraft to another star system.
         Although photons do not have mass, they have both energy and momentum. They can exert a tiny pressure on a reflective surface. Given enough photons, a big enough reflective sail and enough time, light can be used to accelerate a spacecraft to high velocities. Various schemes have been proposed for huge Earth and Space based lasers to beam power to propel a spacecraft with an attached sail around the solar system and even to another star system.
         NASA estimates that it should be possible to send a two hundred pound space probe to Mars in a matter of a few days. A craft carrying human beings could be sent to Mars in a month. An interstellar probe on the kind envisioned by Robert Forward would have to be very small and light. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we would be able to send humans to other stars using a laser as propose by Niven, Pournelle and Forward suggested in their novels.
        Any laser used to propel a spacecraft would have to be enormous and operate in the gigawatt range. Although it would be possible to build and power such a laser on Earth, the atmosphere would interfere with the beam. Also, it would be difficult to direct the beam in a particular direction for long periods of time. It would make more sense to put the lasers in space at one of the Lagrange points where they would be stable and be able to be aimed and kept on target. Energy could be provided by solar power arrays in space. The beam could be focused by rings stationed at strategic locations to create a “Fresnel” effect.
          NASA scientist Philip Lubin received a grant in 2015 from NASA to do proof-of-concept research on laser propulsion systems. He feels that this idea is about ready to move from the science fiction realm into reality. It will be interesting to see if such a system is really practical.
NASA testing a light sail:

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        The U.S. Department of Defense has requested one hundred and eight million dollars from Congress for the construction of a new facility in Colorado. The new facility will be used to plan and experiment with technologies for waging war in space. The need for this facility is based on the concern that Russia and China currently developing space warfare capability that may be used against the U.S. at some future time. With a sufficiently robust and sophisticated technology for targeting satellites and spacecraft, an enemy might be able to stop the U.S. from exploiting Earth orbit and near Earth space for the delivery and coordination of U.S. space technology in a conflict. Ash Carter, the U.S. Defense Secretary told Congress recently that if the Pentagon received the requested funding, it would “enhance America’s ability to identify, attribute, and negate all threatening actions in space.”
       The proposed Pentagon budget that was published a couple of days ago also contained a request for almost two billion dollars to fund space launches. It also asked for hundreds of millions of dollars for space technology research such as counterspace systems. Last year, Congress gave the Pentagon an extra five billion dollars for Pentagon Space Programs over the next five years. The U.S. is engaged in an arms race in space with Russia and China to counter threats to the U.S. array of satellites currently in Earth orbit as well as future satellites.
       Ash Carter also said that “At times in the past, space was seen as a sanctuary. New and emerging threats make clear that that’s not the case anymore and we must be prepared for the possibility of a conflict that extends in space. For so many commercial space endeavors, we want this domain to be just like the oceans and the internet: free and safe for all. There are some in this world who don’t want that to happen.”
       James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, recently told Congress that China and Russia are developing sophisticated military uses of space services” and “counterspace weapon systems to deny, degrade, or disrupt US space systems.”
       Lieutenant Colonel Martin O’Donnell is a spokesman for the U.S. Strategic Command which controls U.S. military space operations. He recently said, “We… remain concerned with growing space capabilities around the globe, particularly those of China and Russia. Both countries have advanced directed-energy capabilities that could be used to track or blind satellites, disrupting key operations, and both have demonstrated the ability to perform complex maneuvers in space.”
       The U.S. military employs a huge orbiting array of satellites to aid in missions around the world. These satellites are critical for communications, reconnaissance, drone control and navigation of ships and planes. However, these satellites are difficult to defend or repair. The main mission of space weapons would be to deprive an enemy of the satellites needed to wage a modern war. The U.S. satellite fleet represent a great vulnerability in the ability of the U.S. to defend itself from major sophisticated enemies such as China and Russia.
       Earth bound weapons systems could jam satellite communications, blind satellites with lasers, launch rockets to blow them up, or deliberately strew debris in the path of satellites. Space weapons might blow up satellites, collide with satellites or blind satellites with paint sprayed on lenses. It may also be possible to seize control of the computers that operate the satellites to disable them or retarget them. China has already destroyed one of their own satellites that was in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that they could launch rockets that could destroy U.S. military geosynchronous satellites.
        It is possible that the actual spending on space weapons and countermeasures is much greater than reported by the Pentagon. Some critics of the U.S. space arms research and development point out that militarizing space may actually make the world less safe rather than insure the national
security of the U.S. 

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       The U.K. has had satellites launched by other countries and U.K astronauts have visited the International Space Station courtesy of the manned space craft of other countries. Up until last October, the U.K. had never launched a rocket into space from their own territory.
        The Western Isles are an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. There fifteen inhabited islands in the chain with a population of about twenty seven thousand and more than fifty uninhabited islands. The WI are one of the thirty two council areas of Scotland.
        In October of 2015, the U.K. was participating in an international military exercise called the At Sea Demonstration 15. The ability of warships to defend themselves against incoming missiles was being demonstrated. One of the incoming missiles used for the test was an American Terrier-Orion two-stage rocket. The missile was launched from the Hebrides missile range in the Western Isles. The missile was playing the part of a ballistic missile as it soared over the North Atlantic. This missile was the first rocket ever launched from the U.K. that left the Earth’s atmosphere.
        This was a major first for space exploration for the U.K. but it received little attention because it was just part of a military exercise. It would have had a place in a museum if it had not been blown apart by the USS Ross, a guided missile destroyer.
        The U.K. is currently consider six locations for the site of a commercial spaceport. Four of the locations under consideration are in Scotland. The Royal Aeronautical Society is holding a conference to hear from representative for the six locations under consideration. The six locations include airports at Prestwick, Campbeltown and Stornoway, the former RAF base at Leuchars in Fife, Newquay airport in Cornwall and Llanbedr airport in the Snowdonia National Park.
        The U.K. spaceport will use a horizontal launch format such as those utilized by the Virgin Galactic project. Space tourism will be one of the uses for the Spaceport. Virgin Galactic is also working on a system that would allow the launch of small satellites from a Boeing 747.
        A feasibility study is being conducted by Highlands and Islands Enterprises for constructing a commercial vertical launch facility near Tongue in Sutherland, a county in the Scottish Highlands. Tongue is located on the North Highland coast of Scotland. Small commercial satellites would be launched from such a facility.
        An area manager for HIE said that “the satellite launch market is growing and we believe there will be an opportunity in the coming years for one location in Europe to establish a vertical launch centre. Advertisement
This area appears to meet many, if not all, of the requirement to become that location and we’ve commissioned this study to gather and weigh up the evidence. While HIE recognizes that a satellite launch site could provide an economic boon for Sutherland, we also care deeply that any potential environmental impacts are fully understood and evaluated as well.”
       There is already a thriving space industry in Scotland. It is estimated that over five thousand people are working in the Scottish space business. Most of these jobs require a high level of skill and education and pay well.
Tongue in Scotland:

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