another big project for the sydney area if this and the dredging goes through it might really help the overall economy in cape breton and nova scotia
Shooting for stars in space tourism on Cape Breton
A private launch site is chosen and the province is on board, SHAWNA RICHER writes
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Don’t show this again Article Comments (1) SHAWNA RICHER
HALIFAX — From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 12:00AM EDT
Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2009 12:39PM EDT
On the unseasonably mild winter day of Jan. 18, Mark James set out from Halifax on a morning's drive to Sydney on Cape Breton Island, laughing under his breath most of the way.
The former Air Force pilot, now an executive with the economic development agency Nova Scotia Business Inc., was meeting with a pair of rocket scientists -- Chirinjeev Kathuria of Chicago and Geoff Sheerin of London, Ont.
The men are partners and chairman and president respectively of the futuristic sounding Chicago-based company PlanetSpace, which hopes to sell space trips as tourism as well as shuttle astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station for the U.S. space agency NASA from a launch pad on the Cape.
That's Cape Breton, not Cape Canaveral.
"They just came in and said here's our vision; would you like to work with us?" Mr. James said yesterday. "I admit it sounded far-fetched at first and pretty far out. But I stopped chuckling 10 minutes into the meeting. I have no doubts now that this is the real deal."
Mr. Sheerin, who has been developing the Canadian Arrow rocket for space tourism, and Mr. Kathuria had already chosen quiet little Cape Breton as the site for an enormous, privately funded launch facility. All they wanted to know was whether the province of Nova Scotia was on board.
It took about two months to hammer out an agreement between the province and the company. The biggest hurdle was settling on a piece of land. It had to be on the coast, a wide-open space essentially in the middle of nowhere.
"Cape Breton was perfect. We knew geographically it made sense," Mr. Sheerin said. "But we had to make sure there was going to be a spot available we could use."
Cape Breton has the same latitude as the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a launch facility in Kazakhstan. The northern location means big savings in fuel costs and the Atlantic Ocean is a good place for falling space junk.
The company estimated it will cost about $150-million to build a launch pad and rocket on the site, which is northwest of Sydney Mines.
Mr. Kathuria said in an interview yesterday he believes the facility could mean 4,000 jobs and as much as $400-million (U.S.) a year in economic spinoff for the region. So far, the province's only involvement has been to pledge 120 hectares of Crown land.
Although it may sound somewhat fanciful, Mr. Kathuria said the facility would see orbital flights similar to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., which brings about $1.4-billion a year and 14,000 jobs to the Sunshine State.
The facility and spacecraft would function as a taxi of sorts for the international space station. NASA could also purchase services from the facility, but the big dream is space tourism.
"We're very enthusiastic," Mr. James said. "The future of space is getting the price per kilo down under $1,000. Once that happens, the opportunities for commercialization are going to be huge."
PlanetSpace has been testing rockets in Ontario and hopes to be ready to launch by late in 2009 or early in 2010.
"Space tourism is heating up across the globe," Mr. Sheerin said. "Orbital flight is going to be very interesting in the future. You could go from Halifax to Vancouver in 40 minutes. It's about time Canada had a domestic launch site."
Mr. James said there are a half-dozen principal investors from the United States, whom he would not name. Mr. Kathuria said he expects more investors from Canada and Europe to join the group in the coming months.
The company was created in response to NASA's requests for bids to shuttle supplies and crews to the space station. NASA is expected to announce a short list of bidders later this week. The project will go ahead even if PlanetSpace isn't chosen, Mr. James said.
Mr. Sheerin began working on the Canadian Arrow for an American competition called X Prize, aimed at building a spacecraft capable of taking people on suborbital flights. He didn't win, but he did make the largest liquid propellant rocket engine ever built in Canada. Mr. Kathuria was a founding director of MirCorp, the first company to send a private citizen into space six years ago.
Mr. Sheerin named his arrowhead shaped craft the Silver Dart after the aircraft Alexander Graham Bell designed and built and flew in 1909 from a site nearby in Cape Breton.
"I never thought I'd be launching mine 30 miles from where they launched the first one," he said. "There's a terrific historical symmetry there."
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