Business, Space, Technology and Society, Weird

The Donald Enters The Space Race

6 Comments

Doug Messier has the story:

The tycoon is backing calls for Prestwick airport in Ayrshire to be chosen as the launchpad for commercial space flights and will offer VIP packages for passengers at his nearby Turnberry golf resort if it is.

In its bid, a consortium will unveil Trump as the exclusive hotel partner for rich space tourists jetting into the region from across the globe. Tailor-made packages will include castle tours, visits to distilleries and island-hopping in the Hebrides.

I wonder if he’s been talking to Chuck Lauer?

6 thoughts on “The Donald Enters The Space Race”

  1. ?!? Scotland? Isn’t this a little NORTH for a spaceport? Or are tours of the poles to be included in the tour packages? (Again, IANAE.)

      1. OK, so I was correct to think of a parallel to Vandenberg. Both are on the west coast of their respective land masses. Since Vandenberg is used for polar orbits, maybe this place would be, too.

  2. Prestwick, Scotland, is on Scotland’s west coast, and has inhabited land all around it (Ireland to the SE, parts of Scotland everywhere else bit the NW) so it’s utterly useless for an orbital launch on any azimuth save, perhaps, for northwest, which would be aiming at a slightly high inclination counter rotational orbit (rather useless for most things, plus having a delta/v penalty). They simply can’t be considering Prestwick for orbital launch; it’s only for air launched, like Virgin Galactic, Pegasus, or Stratolaunch (but the latitude would still limit inclination for an orbital air launch).

    IMHO, they’d be rather crazy to spend money on a “spaceport” of this nature now, when there’s not yet a viable customer ready to operate. (unless they can get Pegasus). If they’re angling for one or both of the other two, or perhaps Lynx, IMHO it would behoove them to wait.

    1. Good points. What would the destination be? Can they achieve orbit? Or are they planning to just fly over the Arctic and land in North America? As Arizona pointed out, they’re at a bad angle to rendezvous with anything (that was launched from someplace else).

      I think that so far Trump doesn’t have to put up any cash. Talk is cheap.

      1. For suborbital, it’s just up and down, a ballistic arc somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 miles long. The carrier plane flies out, drops the payload, which flies back. I’m assuming they’d need to be within payload (spaceplane) glide distance of a runway, in case the engine didn’t light. The passengers might not appreciate ditching in the North Atlantic 100 miles offshore, so my guess is they’d launch from the south toward Prestwick.

        Neither Lynx nor Virgin Galactic’s current designs can achieve orbit, it’s not even close. It might sound close because they achieve close to low earth orbit altitude (they get to about 62 miles, so about 1/3 ISS altitude). 1/3 isn’t close, really, but it’s far closer than they get to orbit, because orbit is all about speed; about 17,000 mph. Spaceship 2 will do only about 2500 mph. Lynx will be even slower, in the same ballpark as a Concorde at about 1400mph.

        As for Trump, making Prestwick a “spaceport” makes perfect sense from his POV; it won’t cost him anything, and it may well increase the value of his properties in the area. For everyone else, especially taxpayers, not so good. 🙂

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