The Toronto Star reports this morning that PlanetSpace has signed an agreement with the government of Nova Scotia to develop a spaceport in the province for the company’s planned orbital vehicle. As reporter Scott Simmie writes:
…Nova Scotia has signed a “team agreement” to provide 300 acres of land – and perhaps even some funding – for a massive orbital launch facility that will involve industry giants and could eventually be on scale with huge NASA operations.
There are a lot of big claims there: “massive orbital launch facility”, “industry giants”, and “on scale with huge NASA operations”. However, the evidence to support that in the article is pretty weak—perhaps simply because the agreement hasn’t been formally announced yet, but nonetheless enough to raise questions among skeptics.
For example, the article claims that the company has “also been in talks with the U.S. space agency, which is very interested in their Silver Dart design.” (So interested, it seems, that the company did not make the cut in the first round of the COTS evaluations.) Company chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria told the Star that the company “in discussions with NASA to sign a space act agreement with one of the NASA centres to build a cargo and crew vehicle for the International Space Station.” This sounds like a typical Space Act agreement where NASA facilities are provided for testing, or other assistance, with no exchange of funds. In other words, if PlanetSpace is going to build a “cargo and crew vehicle” for the ISS, it will have to raise the money elsewhere to do it.
Perhaps that’s where the “industry giants” come in. No names were mentioned in the article, but Mark James, an official with Nova Scotia Business Inc., the province’s business development agency, said that “industry leaders from Canada and the U.S. are on board”.
The size of the proposed facility seems a little small: it’s less than half a square mile, whereas Spaceport America in New Mexico will have access to nearly 50 times the land. (James also says that New Mexico is spending “over $500 million for a facility similar to this”; that’s two to three times what the state plans to spend on the spaceport, even when converting from US to Canadian dollars.)
One space tourism-related item not covered in last week’s report about the company: PlanetSpace is still planning to develop and operate the Canadian Arrow suborbital vehicle, but not from the Nova Scotia spaceport. Instead, Kathuria said Canadian Arrow will operate from a “Midwestern state”. However, there’s not much in the way of options there: Oklahoma’s spaceport is inteneded for horizontal takeoff and landing vehicles, not VTOL vehicles like Canadian Arrow; New Mexico, while most likely able to support such launches, is not typically considered a “Midwestern” state. Maybe Spaceport Sheboygan would be an option…
[…] Another Halifax newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, features a skeptic about this whole approach: me. I talked with the reporter for about 15 minutes, discussing my issues with the project (which I outlined here yesterday); I was surprised how much play those comments got in the article. I’ll note here that my skepticism doesn’t mean I don’t believe that the company can’t do what it’s claiming, only that there’s insufficient evidence available publicly today to support claims that they can—a subtle but important distinction. […]
[…] A few items of interest from this article: This is the first time that I can recall PlanetSpace saying that they plan to use the Silver Dart, which they originally proposed for orbital missions for NASA’s COTS demonstration program, for suborbital flights. Previously, they planned to use a capsule that would splash down (that capsule is still shown on the PlanetSpace web site.) That approach does make sense, though, if they’re still interested in developing the Silver Dart for orbital flights, which they are (chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria told MSNBC’s Alan Boyle that they’re still interested in NASA’s COTS program once it moves out of its current demonstration stage.) The Ohio site would not be used for orbital operations: PlanetSpace is still planning on developing a spaceport for that in Nova Scotia, as announced this summer. […]
[…] There are a few interesting items in the article beyond Capt. Wong’s motion sickness woes. The seasickness is an issue because the Canadian Arrow spacecraft will splash down in the Atlantic after launching from the Cape Breton spaceport in Nova Scotia, starting around 2010, according to the article. However, when the Cape Breton project was announced in August, it was intended only for orbital flights of its Silver Dart orbital spacecraft, not the suborbital Canadian Arrow capsule, which would operate from a “Midwestern” state. Earlier this month, when Ohio was revealed as that Midwestern state, the focus was on suborbital flights of the Silver Dart, a winged vehicle that could land on a runway, rather than the Canadian Arrow capsule that requires a water landing. (To make things more confusing, the spacecraft described later in the article does sound like the Silver Dart.) Has there really been a change in plans, or is the company (inadvertently) sending out mixed messages? […]