Spaceport Sweden reaches agreement with Virgin Galactic

Investment in future of sub-orbital tourism spreads to ESA's front yard.

SpaceBank: Esrange Space Centre: Senior representatives from Spaceport Sweden and Virgin Galactic have presented their latest progress towards commercial spaceflights for private space tourists.

The press conference was opened by Dr. Olle Norberg , the initiator and chairman of Spaceport Sweden. After had welcomed everyone he handed over to Mr. Sven Grahn, senior advisor (and Blogger) at the Swedish Space Corporation, who presented his work related to the establishment of Spaceport Sweden.

"We have studied very practical matters such as, for example, the suitability of the available infrastructure in Kiruna spaceship when operating in , the weather conditions, the possible flight profile for Virgin Galactic at Kiruna, any additional infrastructure that may be needed, the regulatory framework in Sweden and Europe for personal spaceflight and a host of other matters," said Grahn.

"We have not encountered any major obstacles along the way and don't expect to. Our next step will be to keep working on regulatory matters, and further defining the way we take care of space travellers and any additional infrastructure that may be needed."

Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic, talked about the challenge and necessity of designing totally new and energy efficient techniques to access space, which will help to transform the applications of space at a time when civilization needs all the technological help it can get. He also explained VG's vision of not only offering spaceflights to the general public but also of developing a launch vehicle that could be part of a longer term development program involving space science, payload deployment and potentially other applications yet to be defined.

"A significant factor of working together with Spaceport Sweden is that, in common with Spaceport America in New Mexico which will be our primary operating base, they can, as and when we are able to operate outside the US, offer much more that just a spaceport for space tourism," he said. "I'm not just thinking about the unique adventures one can enjoy in the Kiruna area, but also the long experience that Spaceport Sweden has in space science with sounding rockets."

"They've been in this business since 1966 and have the experience, knowledge and infrastructure needed to launch and communicate with experiments performed in space in real time. This really matches our vision of making further use of the new technology developed by Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites in California."

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