The United Kingdom as a Spaceport Corridor to the World

Polar Orbital Space Race

Sutherland spaceport should be prioritised in Whitehall. Sutherland, located within the Melness Crofting Estate, on the A’ Mhòine peninsula in Sutherland, Caithness and Sutherland, Highland, Scotland, United Kingdom, is ideally placed for launching small satellites to polar orbit and Sun-synchronous orbit. Every Spaceport is associated with corresponding drop zones, or regions where rocket stages fall back to the Earth’s surface during a successful launch and where aborted missions are likely to crash land. The list of potential launch sites shrinks rapidly when considering the need for polar launch capabilities—launching directly into an orbit that passes over both the north and south poles—which requires drop zones to the north or south. The drop zone north of the proposed Sutherland Spaceport places Sutherland in an ideal band to launch polar orbital satellite constellations. It goes deeper than this. Such aerospace thought on ideal bands, azimuth ranges, flight paths should become a feature of the UK’s plans. Follow the orbit of one of these satellites for instance, and we might approach a broader conceptual Belt and Road dream for the UK.  

Polar Orbital Capabilities are being explored by numerous other government/private collaborations. Whitehall must act quickly on Sutherland Spaceport and combine this with a long-term strategy to lock-in growth in the upcoming decades. To do so will require a bold rethinking of the British economy as a space economy that benefits all four nations of the Union. Utilising Modern Monetary Theory rather than an Austerity programme could kickstart the Spaceport Corridor Dream. We need to dream, Xi Jinping has outlined the China Dream; Elon Musk the American Space Dream; a UK dream needs to kickstart itself and not in the language of empire but the language of space. On June 04 2020, The Herald Scotland reported – Scottish spaceport dream could evaporate if pandemic delays planning approval, partner warns” Orbex, the Forres-headquartered aerospace company, is due to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed £17.3 million facility, but says other countries are moving faster than Scotland. “Norway, for example, has committed money to its spaceport and is moving ahead,” said Orbex chief executive Chris Larmour. Sutherland is a key entry point into a potentially huge growth corridor. I have outlined below potential Polar Orbit Competitors, in particular Portugal’s Azores facility which lies on the Meridian concept for a UK Longitudinal Space/Ocean Belt and Road. 

This is a sweeping vision, I fully appreciate light on detail. In the polar orbital space, there are multiple spaceports that either already or plan to provide polar launch capabilities that could erode the UK’s position before it is even out of the gates. Which is why the UK government should think about not only ‘further supporting the UK space industry’, ‘further pledging funds to STEM tertiary education’ and so on, but wholesale transform the UK economy into a space economy. A quick search of the word ‘polar’ in CSIS’s March 2019 Spaceports of the World report notes the Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian and American plans to construct polar orbital spaceport launch facilities. 

Portugal – “In 2018, the Portuguese government announced its plans to build a spaceport on Santa Maria Island in the Azores archipelago.287 The Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, is located approximately approximately 1,400 km (870 miles) off the Portuguese coast in the Atlantic Ocean. The project—called the Atlantic International Satellite Launch Programme—accepted proposals from commercial space companies interested in developing vehicles to launch from Santa Maria Island.288 Of the 14 companies that expressed interest—including 11 from Europe, two from both the United States and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency—the Programme has selected five companies to develop more detailed proposals for the spaceport.289 ArianeGroup, the European company that devel- oped the Ariane 5 rocket that launches from the Guiana Space Centre, is interested in managing the new spaceport on Santa Maria.  The Portuguese government also plans to start commercial space launch from the island in 2021. While this represents competition   Now postponed to 2021, Norway was due to host the Spaceport Norway (https://spaceport-norway.com/a-brief-history/). The creators of the programme plan to offer affordable services to those who are going to launch satellites weighing up to 500kg into polar orbits, or those, synchronized with the Sun at an altitude ranging from 400 to 1,000km above Earth.This project is a joint initiative of the Portuguese government and the regional authorities of the Azores, being carried out with technical support from the European Space Agency, which Portugal is a member of.

Norway – Andøya Spaceport was established as a project in 2018, with the aim of establishing the first European launch base for small satellites. It is mainly satellites for Earth observation and communications that are planned to be launched from Andøya, in polar- or sun-synchronous orbit. In polar orbit, the satellite passes above or near the Earth’s poles at each orbit. This is favorable for Norway as they then provide good satellite coverage of Norwegian areas, good communication and sea monitoring in the north. Sun-synchronous orbit means that the satellite passes a given latitude to two fixed local times, one for northbound and one for southbound passage. The satellite’s orbital plane rotates eastwards approx. 1 degree per day, and so it maintains the angle with respect to the sunlight and gets most light for its solar cells. In this way, satellites for Earth observation receive data with an equal amount of sunlight and can thus use data to analyze changes that occur on the surface throughout the year. (https://spaceport-norway.com) 

Sweden – Spaceport Sweden is a company that plans to make Kiruna the primary European Spaceport for personal suborbital spaceflight for space tourism, research, education, and a hub for cross-industry innovation. The Esrange Space Center is a sub-orbital launch facility near Kiruna, Sweden. First founded by the European Space Research Organisation in the early 1960s, Esrange has been used to launch sounding rockets and high-altitude balloons dedicated to atmospheric science research. In 2017, the Swedish government funded a study to determine the feasibility of supporting orbital launches at Esrange. The following year, researchers concluded that the site could indeed be used to launch low-Earth orbiting satellites, most efficiently to polar orbits. Although no launch dates have been announced, a satellite launched from the Esrange Space Centre could potentially be the first object placed into orbit from mainland Europe. Nearby, at the Kiruna Airport, a company called Spaceport Swe- den hosts aircraft flights for tour- ists wishing to experience the sensations of low gravity and see the northern lights.254 In 2007, the Swedish government signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic, committing to building a regu- latory environment such that Spaceport Sweden or perhaps the Esrange Space Center could become the company’s first Euro- pean launch facility.

U.S.A. [Vandenburg] In 2018, the commander of the 45th Space Wing announced a new opportunity to launch southward from Cape Canaveral by first flying eastward and then turning south, following what has been called the “polar corridor.”68 This flight path from Cape Canaveral would require more fuel than launching directly southward into a high-inclination orbit—an option available at the spaceports at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska—and has yet to be pursued by any launch provider out of the Cape. The vast majority of the Iridium and Iridium NEXT satellites—which make up a polar orbit network of commu- nication satellites—were launched from Vandenberg. Vandenberg’s location in the southwestern corner of the United States severely limits the orbital des- tination of space launches. While VAFB has launched more polar-orbiting satellites than any other spaceport in the world, orbital destinations with lower inclinations, closer to the spaceport’s 34.6° lat- itude, require orbital maneuvers after launch. 

Russia – Yasny Launch Base—located on the Dombarovsky Air Base—is a Russian spaceport in the southern Orenburg Oblast, about 40 km (25 miles) north of the country’s border with Kazakhstan. The space- port was upgraded in the 2000s to support launches using the Dnepr launch vehicle.129 Since its first orbital launch in 2006, Yasny has been used exclusively for placing satellites in low Earth orbit. A majority of launches from Yasny Launch Base are destined for polar orbits, requiring a launch in the northern or southern direction. Notably, launches using the Dnepr in the southern direction result in the first stage dropping in Turkmenistan and the second stage in the Indian Ocean.

[Alaska] Constructed in January 1998, the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska (PSCA)—formerly known as the Kodiak Launch Complex—was the United States’ first FAA-licensed commercial spaceport to be built outside of a federal test range. The commercial launch pad at PSCA is suitable for launching small solid-propellant rockets, in- cluding those derived from intercontinental ballistic missiles. Situated at 57° north of the equa- tor on Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, the facility is the United States’ northernmost space- port. While such a location is not ideal for launches to low inclinations or high altitudes, open waters to the south and southeast allow the spaceport to efficiently launch payloads to polar and sun-synchronous orbits. 

[Michigan] Chuck Lauer presenting “A Multi-Site Spaceport Licensing Plan for Launching to Polar Orbit Over Lake Huron and Lake Superior” with the Michigan Space Initiative at Space Access 2019. Northern Michigan is uniquely positioned for a polar orbit satellite launch facility: low density population, extensive restricted airspace, interstate highway system accessible, engineering and manufacturing capacity, and most critically, home of MAMA’s Michigan Launch Initiative (MLI).  Michigan is coordinating with Ontario, Canada on an international multi-site spaceport effort. Multiple aerospace companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, ISRO, ESA Vega, Firefly Aerospace and the US Department of Defense, have plans to launch thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). From 2007 thru 2018 over 1,200 small satellites were launched. Between 2018 and 2027 more than 7,000 small satellite launches are planned… if sufficient launch capacity exists. At full capacity, the MLI launch site will conduct 22-25 launches per year, with command center operating 24/7 for northern tracking operations. The infrastructure investment budget is $50-75 million. Estimated revenue per launch is $15,000,000 or $375,000,000 per year. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/04/michigan-spaceport-for-best-access-to-polar-orbits-for-megasatellite-constellations.html 

China – The Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center is used primarily to place satellites in polar and near-polar orbits.

India – The Satish Dhawan Space Centre—also known as the Sriharikota Range—is India’s only orbital launch facility.113 Located on the country’s eastern coast, about 70 km (43 miles) north of Chennai, the spaceport at Sriharikota supports the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) steadily increasing number of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) launches.

Japan – The spaceport at Uchinoura is less-utilized than Japan’s Tanegashi- ma Space Center, located 70 miles south of USC, with no more than two successful orbital launch- es per year since its founding. Both spaceports are ideally situated for polar or 30°-inclined orbits with open ocean to the east and south.

North Korea – The Sohae Satellite Launching Station—also known as Tongch’ang-dong Space Launch Center, Tong- chang-ri, and Pongdong-ri—is a spaceport on the western coast of North Korea. Unlike the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground—another North Korean launch facility known for at least two failed orbital launch attempts—the spaceport at Sohae is well-positioned to launch its rock- ets southward, largely avoiding Japan and South Korea during its earliest flight stages. Both pay- loads launched from Sohae are in polar, low Earth orbit.

Australia – The Woomera Test Range is an inactive spaceport in central South Australia. The test range, covering a land area of over 120,000 square km (almost 50,000 square miles), was first constructed in 1947 as a military weapons testing center for Australia and the United Kingdom. The test range at Woomera achieved its first orbital launch on November 29, 1967, making Australia the fourth nation to launch a satellite from its own spaceport. The payload, known as WRESAT, flew aboard a Redstone rocket purchased from the United States.208 Four years later, the United Kingdom used the spaceport for the only successful orbital launch of its Black Arrow vehicle. Both launches were to LEO, at polar inclinations.

‘Space Capitalism with Social Characteristics’

The UK is behind in being a testbed for the new technologies of the 21st Century because it thinks the ground is made up, it is fully developed at bi-poles: the soul (blue/red and nothing in between) the individual (going somewhere/going nowhere and nothing in between) the family (containable nuclear , uncontainable nuclear disaster and nothing in between) the individual (instagram/atomic or Facebook/dissolutive and nothing in between). The UK is not a testing field for new technologies nor new modes of political familialness, such latter ideas died in the 20th C with fascism, communism, but there is a huge, overwhelming argument for the UK to develop its own model out of the inertial field of European memory, for the 21st Century of Space Capitalism with Social Characteristics. Thinkers on the right of the spectrum often argue that big government crowds-out private innovation, that we cannot spend more than we have, that the austere belt is good government in uncertain times, thinkers on the left argue that: absent governmental re-distribution, the majority are already fuselage to an economy-as-rocket ridden by the 1%, that potential is criminally stolen from each generation. The rocket metaphor is important, because it enframes how well-meaning governments often make poor investments when the optics and the aim of Cabinet is to gift the economy speed, uplift, influence. 

This chase for uplift sees any governmental redistribution before the launch as anathema, slow, wasteful, expending in a situation of limited time and radical uncertainty. But Modern Monetary Theory and dynamic modelling of possible paths, and in general the understanding of the economy in rocketry dynamics terms should re-set the way we approach the 21st Century. Rather than law and order seeking to quell the unrest at the base of a static view economy, resources should be re-allocated toward enabling mobility into a dynamic rocket-like space economy. Potential and Possibilization arcs should become a common language and visual field. STEM education pledges, apprenticeship schemes, re-skilling efforts, northern re-balancing, kinaesthetic learning-by-space-manufacturing, kinaesthetic learning-by-experience of frequent space launches, kinaesthetic learning-by engaging space humanities with space social sciences with space gender studies with space race studies (see Adilifu Nama’s remarkable book Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film and the vast writings and art and visual sonic fiction of black diasporic science fiction in the UK (https://landing.athabascau.ca/blog/view/156344/on-black-british-science-fiction) and Bernardine Evaristo’s top 20 books by Black British writers (https://www.waterstones.com/blog/bernardine-evaristo-reveals-her-top-20-books-by-black-british-womxn-writers) to only understand the depth of this complex patterned moment. Envisioning a way out from the current crisis should wholesale rephysicalise the concept of British Identity as Diasporic Island-like Spacefaring Collisional, as Palimpsest, as Fractal, as Orbital Roche Effects, fissional, nuclear, poly-dimensional, rocketry primed by difference toward a collective future. A law and order society is fundamentally a static-view society that has taken the radical uncertainty of the 21st Century in defensive terms, what the UK needs is to fundamentally re-insert movement, momentum, trajectory, potential into its economic equation and understand that prison and punishment is subtractive, fundamentally subtractive, prison is atmospheric drag.  

Developing a Space Capitalism with Social Characteristics, the UK should thrive on solving the Piketty equation of early anthropocene rocketry dynamics. This varible concerns fundamentally the inertial dynamics of wealth, where, for want of one example, if your parents can buy you a house in London, you are set, if you rent on the other hand, your possibilization arc and fuel gauge is already half-spent before the launch. Piketty defines a just society as one that allows all of its members access to the widest possible range of fundamental goods. Fundamental goods include education, health, the right to vote, and more generally to participate as fully as possible in the various forms of social, cultural, economic, civic and political life. A just society organizes socioeconomic relations, property rights, and the distribution of income and wealth in such a way as to allow its least advantaged members to enjoy the highest possible life conditions.’ How the eudaimonial variable interacts with the military-industrial parabola of a Space Capitalism with Social Characteristics concerns how the parabola must maintain itself in a perceptual Goldilocks zone between Domestic Support and Promethean Overstretch in the midst of possible Lewis turning points (see Evan Hurwitz and Tshilidzi Marwala) and demographic window effects.The Piketty component thus fundamentally concerns how the rocket distributes i.e. population perception as fuselage effects. Piketty also closely relates with Polanyian dynamics concerning the optical embedding point of where markets and states must embed in one another.  The UK as a Spaceport Corridor of the 21st and 22nd Century should thus aim to become a world leader in developing institutions that synchronise the reduction of the Gini Coefficient and regional unbalance with the equation of a new space age, the UK  is furthermore better placed than the U.S. to approach the equation of a new social contract through a new space age. 

In 1983, Paul Virilio, the French thinker on speed, inertia and the relativization of time, spoke of a north-south inversion that started with the Suez War. 

All geostrategic organization was founded on an East-West orienta­tion. The great traditional Indo-European emigration flows went in this direction. All the obligatory places of passage were hotbeds of subversion in the political sense, and of domination in the military sense. It was just as much the Balkans, the Dardanelles, the Bosporus, as the Mediterranean, Egypt, the Suez Canal, and Gibraltar with what’s happening around it. You had an entire East-West confrontation. Now, there is an absolute North-South inversion. By North-South, I don’t mean following a developed country/ underdeveloped country axis, but strictly in geographic terms. The Falklands war showed it. It’s the end of narrow passes, of the importance of passages, straits, isthmuses. It began with the Suez campaign, which was still an East-West war. The Suez War brought about an extraordinary transformation in containers and ships that passed by Cape Horn. There was an inversion: flows no longer passed through the little canals-Suez, Panama, Gibraltar, or the Bosporus-but into the open sea: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, the Indian Ocean, and of course South Africa and Antarc­ tica. This inversion is related to the arteries of the Persian Gulf and the passage of the great oil channels. But it’s more than that: It’s the entire East-West conflict tipping toward the North-South axis. Power becomes a function of deterrence. It’s no longer simply a matter of quantitative might-the number of warships afloat, the Home Fleet-it’s also the nuclear submarines on which deterrence rests. We saw it with the START agreements.

The Americans pro­ posed reducing ground forces by half, since the Russians get their power from ground forces and the Americans from nuclear sub­ marines. The Americans played the card of naval power-still qualitative-the submarine being their trump card. A nuclear sub­ marine passing Suez or Panama, however, is no longer really deterrent. It’s not really deterrent except when on the open sea. So this disqualification affects all arms systems, all power relations. They realize that they can only play on the Southern passageways. From this point on, the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean passage leads up toward the Atlantic, the North Atlantic/South Atlantic, and Pacific passageway. And here the Antarctic becomes a crucial geo­ strategic pole. It’s not by chance that everyone got so involved in the Falklands war. Some say the conflict was over oil-that wasn’t the question. The question was that there was a new geostrategic situation and that the Antarctic would be its center, its axis. Once the North-South axis takes prevalence on the geostrategic level, we notice that the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States is no longer the same. The fate of America, Latin America, and Europe is no longer the same. No wonder America isn’t being generous with Europe at the moment. There is an inversion, a tipping which is worth analysing, which is linked to both the submarines’ freedom of movement and the great oil flows which no longer pass by straits and canals.

As the north-south inversion takes a deeper hold of Eurasia into the grasp of the Indo-Pacific, the UK should leverage itself as a meridian spaceport corridor Kiribati was the first nation to witness the first sunrise of the millenium, it is now threatened by rising sea levels that at the same time endanger a former Operation Dominic (1962) Marshall Islands nuclear coffin, and open up the Arctic region to new dangers and possibilities. Just as future lunar industrialization may rely on dominance of the LaGrange points like the sea lines of communication and new Modern Monetary Theory experiments to finance, the 21st Century arc of the UK and beyond must be radically different and radically open to the possibilities of the north-south inversion, and of the possibilization arcs it could grow into, to transcend the current stasis.  Gravity’s rainbow. 

Recommendations 

• With all the world’s focus turning to the Indo-Pacific (https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/time-21st-century-indo-pacific-charter), the UK has a chance to leverage the North Sea and its Atlantic Meridian lines into a comprehensive international space strategy within the major growth regions of Africa. 

• Based on estimates from the UK Government’s Space Innovation an Growth Strategy, the global space market will be worth £400 billion by 2030. The UK government hopes to capture 10% of this global market by 2030. The space industry is growing four times faster than the rest of the UK economy and 39 new companies have been added to the space sector every year since 2012. The UK satellite services industry alone is currently worth an estimated £300 million of GDP.  (https://www.stayincornwall.co.uk/spaceport/) 

• Space is the new development frontier (UNCTAD, 2020), the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme already has a number of projects such as CommonSensing helping the governments of the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu to use Earth observation to build climate resilience. Between Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, the Africa Regional Data Cube aims to stimulate industrial development through space technologies and earth observation. 

• Outside the European Union, the United Kingdom now has an opportunity to focus on a north-south aerospace corridor strategy and to synchronise its domestic northern powerhouse strategy with an international northern sea/space powerhouse strategy 2049. Sutherland Spaceport should be prioritised in Whitehall and the UK government must act quickly as other governments are exploring polar launch capabilities (note Portugal’s Azores facility which lies on the Meridian concept for a UK Longitudinal Space/Ocean Belt and Road.) 

• Sutherland Spaceport should be combined with a long-term strategy to lock-in growth in the upcoming decades but to do so will require a bold rethinking of the British economy as a space economy that benefits all four nations of the Union. Utilising Modern Monetary Theory could kickstart the Spaceport Corridor Dream.  

• The UK’s International Partnership Programme run by the UK Space Agency should be placed at the heart of Whitehall with projects such as Earth and Sea Observation System (EASOS) (Satellite Applications Catapult), Ecometrica Platform (Ecometrica) Satellite Data Services: Near Real Time Imagery (Environment Systems) Service4EO (Deimos Space UK) developing the UK as the Spaceport Corridor of the Prime Meridian.  

• A Project for a reformed DFID/FCO/UK ARPA agency and the IPP could draw from a wealth of NASA resources on spaceport design / institution building (see appendix) to establish the key sectors British space expertise are world-leaders in e.g. space object de-orbiting facilities, small satellite design, space weather expertise and so on to align the UK’s maritime/industrial strategy with a new focus on the Arctic-Africa longitudes as one contiguous developmental and partnership belt.