Aerospaceports - Economic and Schedule Guidelines

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Spaceport development in the United States for many years was exclusively managed by the Federal Government. It then evolved to also include a State - Federal based system and now there are State spaceport initiatives, private US domestic spaceports and private international spaceports. Traditional established Spaceports have within them aviation facilities to provide ancillary support for spaceport operations. Recently Airports have begun incorporating Spaceport infrastructure and cooperative air and space operations. We are witnessing their evolution as Aerospaceports. To date, the authors have completed detailed design and / or environmental planning at four spaceports for Public –Private and entrepreneurial launch vehicle programs. We are currently supporting development of an Aerospaceport at one location and a traditional launch site at a separate location. Historically, some of these spaceports have involved State participation in their development, some are being pursued as part of a local Aviation authority and some are being privately funded and developed. This paper discusses the technical, cost, schedule and political requirements of the vehicle programs that influenced the evolution of the evolving Aerospaceport development models. It then compares and contrasts the differing requirements of Federal, State and private spaceports which influence the ultimate decision of where to conduct a launch. The “New Space” launch companies have different requirements for spaceport technical capabilities, costs and schedules than do the government supported launch operators. There are certain aspects of existing and planned Public – Private or aviation authority based Aerospaceports that provide both app ealing and alienating features to these private companies. There are examples of Public -Private spaceport developments which have not proven useful to the private launch companies. The paper provides the basic guidelines for how new Public – Private Aerospaceports should be developed in order to attract the new innovative launch vehicle operators they desire and maximize their benefits to the local area. I. Introduction For many years spaceport development in the United States was controlled exclusively by the Federal Government. In the 1990’s several commercial spaceports were developed to support commercial orbital launches. At that time most of these commercial spaceports were based on a cooperative State-Federal system. They were still located on Federal property, such as the California Spaceport located on Vandenberg Air Force Base. Spaceport development has continued to evolve and is now a mix of competing approaches. An Aerospaceport, as considered in this paper, is a traditional airport that has also become licensed to support space launch operations. The current generation of Aerospaceports is typically an existing shared military or general aviation airport that has obtained a FAA licensing to operate a launch site in support of suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs). Aerospaceports are expected to evolve to support a wide range of missions including orbital space access for both passengers and cargo. As of writing this paper there are six commercial spaceports with an active license. Of these spaceports three evolved from Federal ranges and are hybrid State-Federal spaceports, two evolved from traditional airfields and are “Aerospaceports”, and one is an independent spaceport built on a new site from the ground up. The two currently FAA / AST licensed Aerospaceports include Oklahoma Spaceport, licensed to the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, and Mojave Air & Space Port, licensed to The East Kern Airport District.