SaxaVord Spaceport gets £139m in funding
May 23, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Scotland’s SaxaVord Spaceport has secured funding to the tune of £139 million (€159.6m) to complete site development and prepare for multiple rocket launch missions. The cash comes in the form of a bond issue, and was reported to the UK parliament at a meeting on May 17th.
The extra cash comes on top of £28 million raised in March last year and a reported £13 million of investment funding from Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) which intends using the Scottish site for its own rocket launches.
SaxaVord Spaceport CEO Frank Strang reminded the UK Parliamentary Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, that the project had received no government funding which was a “sore point” and that public funding should be distributed more fairly.
He added: “Two launches a year doesn’t make for a commercial spaceport. It just can’t. I have an obligation not just to shareholders but to the community and the country to make sure we are a viable spaceport 30 years from now.”
The project has three launch pads under construction and RFA has booked one of those for its exclusive use.
SaxaVord has a licence request submitted to the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority to mound up to 30 launches per year.
SaxaVord is in discussion with nine would-be non-British launchers, said Strang, and the list Others includes the Lockheed Martin-backed ABL Space project, HyImpulse Technologies of Germany and Latitude of France.