Spaceport Singapore

FleaPlus writes "In addition to last week's news of a spaceport in the UAE, Space Adventures has announced that they will also be building a spaceport in Singapore by 2009. The spaceport will offer flights on a variety of vehicles, such as a Russian-built suborbital spaceplane, fighter jets, and Vomit Comet-style weightless parabolas. Space Adventures will be competing with other fully-funded suborbital spaceflight companies, such as Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane."

Guess we're opening up...

[linj]

First a casino, now a spaceport!

I expect democracy to come by 2010.

But what about chewing gum?

[caffiend666]

Yeah, but you can't chew gum and spacewalk at the same time from the Singapore spaceport....

Penalties

[Jon Luckey]

If Singapore canes people for spitting in the subway, what are they going to do when you vomit on a airplane, even if it is in zero-gee.

Re:Avoiding the Americas

[Jon Luckey]

Will they announce one in Florida or in South America next?

No, they announced prospective plans about Florida before this annoucement.

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20060206/BREAKINGNEWS/60206011 [floridatoday.com]

Yeah, well...

[dyslexicbunny]

I'm gonna go build my own spaceport, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the spaceport!

I don't get it.

[artifex2004]

If all of these people are offering sub-orbital flights, who are the customers?
At least so long as these are just joyrides, they remain too expensive to attract a sustainable base.
And I have a hard time seeing business trips really needing that much speed, either, not when you could videoconference for several magnitudes smaller.

Time-sensitive cargo, like organs for transplantation, maybe. But that's still a rich person's game. And the amount of time it takes on the ground before and after hitting a hub city still make it quite unlikely.

I wonder

[foniksonik]

"Why build one when you can get two for twice the money?" - SR Hadden

Re:I wonder

[shpoffo]

That is "Why build one when you can BUY two for twice the price"

Are any bookies taking bets

[yoprst]

on where they will intend to build their next spaceport(s)?

Good idea...

[JediLow]

Singapore does seem like a good location to have it - its equatoral so launches should be much easier... plus the country has a phenominal infrastructure. My only question - where in the country are they going to build it? The last time I was there (2 years ago) the models the building authority had showed all the land available was already built on (the only places that weren't built on were set aside for military use and were recently 'reclaimed' - meaning that it wasn't safe to build on yet).

Seaports and spaceports

[raga]

UAE operating a spaceport? We have problems about even letting them manage the logistics of loading/unloading containers at seaports, and we'll let them fly rockets capable of putting a payload in LEO?