Colorado launches bid for spaceport
By Ann Schrader,
The Denver PostThe future of Colorado's commercial space industry may lie out on the wind-whipped runways of Front Range Airport.
Colorado is pursuing Federal Aviation Administration designation for a spaceport, with Front Range as the likely site for such a facility, Gov. John Hickenlooper announced Wednesday.
Front Range is located near Watkins, east of Denver. Its proposed status as "Spaceport Colorado" would allow for creation of a facility offering tourism, travel and cargo transport to space and from point to point on Earth.
Spaceports — of which eight are active in the United States — are viewed as important economic-development tools.
"These are the opportunities, like cellphones in the early 1990s, that seem farfetched but may not be all that far away. The potential here is huge," Hickenlooper said to about 300 aerospace industry members gathered at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Just a year or two ago, Colorado was considered too populated to allow the construction and operation of a spaceport.
Since then, the development of dual-propulsion spacecraft that can take off from a conventional runway has altered those perceptions. The emerging technology is expected to make space travel easier because it doesn't have the risks of vertical launches.
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