License sends spirits sky-high
Facility housed at Front Range Airport cleared for takeoff
Nearly seven years after Gov. John Hickenlooper first enunciated the need for a facility in Colorado where next-generation space vehicles can routinely launch and land — ferrying satellites and star-bound tourists into suborbital space — federal regulators have granted Spaceport Colorado its operator license.
Adams County spokesman Jim Siedlecki said the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval came through Friday. A formal announcement on the license is scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. Monday at Adams County government headquarters.
The operator license means that Spaceport Colorado, housed at Front Range Airport in Adams County, becomes the nation’s 11th facility of its kind, opening the door for Colorado to further cement its robust reputation as an epicenter for space-related missions and business ventures.
“Certainly, having the regulatory stamp of approval from the FAA does enable Spaceport Colorado to accelerate engagement and partnerships with potential users,” said Carolyn Belle, a senior analyst with Northern Sky Research who specializes in the aerospace sector.
But it’s the users, the handful of companies developing the space planes of the future, that are lagging behind the infrastructure be-
ing built to accommodate their vehicles. Dave Ruppel, airport director for Front Range Airport, said the first horizontal launch and landing at Spaceport Colorado won’t occur for at least a half decade.
“I would expect the earliest that a space plane could be taking off would be five to eight years from now,” he said, noting that companies such as Airbus, Virgin Atlantic, Reaction Engines Ltd. and Rocketplane Global are all working on prototypes or test vehicles that have not yet been certified for flight.
Despite the looming wait ahead, Ruppel said the granting of the license by the FAA is no small matter.
“It’s really a tremendous feeling — it’s a huge opportunity for us to say we’re a spaceport and open for business,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to promote exciting jobs in an industry that is growing by leaps and bounds.”
Nearly 170 businesses are in the aerospace industry in Colorado, employing more than 25,000 private-sector workers, according to the Denver South Economic Development Partnership. That makes the Centennial State second only to California for the size of its aerospace industry.
Spaceport Colorado allows the state to capitalize on all of that talent and know-how with an easyto-access launch facility just a few miles southeast of Denver International Airport, said Barry Gore, president and CEO of Adams County Economic Development.
“It’s a huge step forward for our aerospace industry and our competitiveness as an aerospace state,” Gore said. “If you want to be competitive with (other aerospace states), you have to have a capability like this.”
Many of the other American spaceports are in places with traditionally deep roots in space exploration, such as Florida, California and Texas. But not all: Spaceport America, where Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane blew up in the sky after launch nearly four years ago, is in New Mexico. There also are spaceports in Oklahoma, Alaska and Virginia.
“This is going to ignite interest in space for a whole new generation,” Gore said of Spaceport Colorado, whose twin 8,000-foot-long runways are sufficient to handle the space planes currently under development.
In addition to space tourism and satellite deployment, scientists and researchers may fly a plane to suborbital space to carry out experiments in a micro-gravity environment, which could have useful applications in the medical or tech fields. The advantage of suborbital space flight over booking a trip to the International Space Station is a matter of money, Ruppel said. Big money.
NASA has been paying Russia about $70 million to transport each of its astronauts to the space station since the last space shuttle flew in 2011.
“To get something on a flight to the space station, it’s very expensive,” Ruppel said. “So if you can do something for tens of thousands of dollars on a suborbital vehicle, there’s a lot of opportunity for research on those kinds of flights.”
Spaceport Colorado won’t accommodate vertical launches, but rather space planes that take off like a normal jet and then engage rockets at about 45,000 feet to transport passengers or researchers into suborbital space, which begins about 62 miles above Earth. Ruppel said there will be one launch a week, lasting about an hour in total. The portion of the journey in space will typically last no longer than 10 to 15 minutes.
Future uses of the space planes could include global suborbital travel, with a flight from Adams County to Japan clocking in at 90 minutes as opposed to the 12 hours it takes now.
“You could have your meeting in Tokyo and be home for dinner,” Ruppel said.
While eight members of the state’s congressional delegation this past spring signed a letter to the FAA urging the agency to grant Spaceport Colorado an operator license as soon as possible, Rep. Ken Buck did not attach his signature. Residents he represents in Congressional District 4, which covers the Eastern Plains, have expressed concern and frustration about being located under Spaceport Colorado’s launch zone.
Their worries run the gamut — from the impacts airspace closures during launches could have on crop-dusting operations and Flight for Life emergencies to the potential hazards of a full-scale, inflight disaster raining pieces of rocket and chunks of plane down on fields, livestock and homes.
Former state Sen. Greg Brophy, who formed the group Concerned Citizens of the Eastern Plains, said last week that he still hasn’t received satisfactory answers to his questions on the impacts of what he derisively calls a “glorified carnival ride” in the heavens.
“This is going to ignite interest in space for a whole new generation.”
Barry Gore, president and CEO of Adams County Economic Development