The Importance of Own Spaceport
There are both economic and political benefits for the Middle East, Europe and Asia to build one common heavy rocket spaceport.
-
1
Political Security - To launch our satellites and technology of national defense without the need for approval from China, Russia or the US.
-
2
Economic Security - Without our own neutral heavy rocket spaceport, we will overpay extensively for future launches. To give an example, when the USA retired its Space Shuttle program in 2011, both the US and Europe had to rely on Russia’s Rockets, to transport their astronauts to the ISS.
Given that Europe and the US had no other means of access, Russia started increasing the prices of a seat on the Soyuz Rocket, from $21 million in 2011 to $82 million by 2017. With the start of the Russian-Ukraine war in 2022, the ESA had to halt several planned missions, as no rocket was available.
Additionally, every 60 – 90 million USD we pay for a launch to the US, is capital, which could have been spent developing our own spaceport and rockets, which would achieve break-even cashflow, five years after initial launch of the first rocket. To predict, where the current industry is headed, we must look at the recent actions of the world’s space agencies.