PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Recycling Prestwick/Kinloss?
View Single Post
Old 21st Nov 2017, 07:09
  #34 (permalink)  
BEagle
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
Posts: 26,841
Received 280 Likes on 114 Posts
Unless you have the luxury of vast, sparsely inhabited areas such as Baikonur, to avoid wasting fuel and limiting payload, a launching site for space vehicles needs to be:

1. As close to the Equator as possible.
2. On an east coast.

Hence the Ariane site at Kourou is ideal - and is also why the US uses Cape Canaveral.

Prestwick would be far from ideal and Kinloss almost as bad. Quite where a UK site could be based is difficult to imagine. As would be firing rockets up through busy airspace!

Another daft idea from Mother MayDay's increasingly weak and unstable government?
BEagle is online now