Work continues this past July 31 at the SaxaVord Spaceport on Unst, an island in Scotland's far north. If regulators approve, this would become Britain's first vertical rocket-launch site.Photos courtesy of Paul Riddell/SaxaVord Spaceport
More below • Video: The Scottish spaceport project explained
The tiny island of Unst sits far off the north coast of Scotland and is famous for its collection of Viking artifacts, dating back to the days when it was a waystation for Norsemen travelling in giant boats to foreign lands. Unst is about to become a transit hub once again, only this time for a decidedly 21st-century mode of transport: rockets.
The SaxaVord Spaceport, located on the northeast corner of the island, is set to receive regulatory approval to become Britain’s first site for vertical rocket launches.
The spaceport is expected to be fully operational in early 2024, and if all goes well it will send as many as 30 rockets a year into orbit.
Debbie and Frank Strang have championed the idea of the spaceport on Unst.
It’s all the brainchild of Frank and Debbie Strang, a dynamic husband-and-wife duo who built the complex despite having no background in space science, no government support and only a handful of financial backers willing to take a chance on their crazy idea. “Even now, I can be talking to somebody on the phone and in the back of my mind I am thinking, how on earth did we get here?” Ms. Strang said in an interview from her office at the spaceport.
The Strangs – she’s 58 and he’s 65 – came to Unst in 2006 after buying the island’s decommissioned army base. The couple planned to start an eco-tourism business and open a gin distillery.
Military bases were nothing new to Mr. and Ms. Strang. They’d met while serving with the Royal Air Force in Scotland, although their duties had little to do with flying. Mr. Strang was a physical-education instructor and Ms. Strang managed logistics.
They left the RAF in the 1990s after getting married, and set their sights on buying abandoned military sites. After a few hits and misses – they briefly owned Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport – they purchased SaxaVord for around £3-million ($5-million).
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john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
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john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
Atlantic Ocean
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john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands, was struggling mightily at the time. The army base had closed only a few years after the local airport shut down. Between the mid-1990s and 2006, the island’s population dropped by about half, to 650.
The Strangs had a tough time at first and nearly sold the base in 2008. But then a report from the UK Space Agency in 2017 changed everything. The agency had been looking at how to develop Britain’s satellite launch capability, and it concluded that the best place for a spaceport was Unst. The island’s remote location and proximity to the North Pole made it ideal for communications satellites that orbit the Earth from pole to pole at low levels. These in-demand satellites are often synchronized with the movement of the sun, which means they pass over the same spot at the same time every day.
The Strangs seized on the findings and reached out to some experts to see whether a spaceport was realistic. They got a favourable response and brought the proposal to the Shetland Islands council. “I did have to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day,” recalled Ryan Thomson, a councillor who represents Unst. “I would say the initial response was skepticism, followed by, ‘This can’t be real.’ ”
Deputy CEO Scott Hammond, right, watches with project manager Elizabeth Johnson as workers pour concrete on the firt SaxaVord launch pad last November.
The couple forged ahead. They hired an ex-RAF fighter pilot, Scott Hammond, who helped them map out plans for three launch pads, each accompanied by a set of massive rocket hangars. To pay for everything, the Strangs mortgaged their properties and nearly went bankrupt before finally persuading Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, who owns large swaths of land in Scotland, to invest £1.43-million ($2.45-million).
The British government initially turned a blind eye and preferred rival locations in Sutherland, Scotland, and Cornwall, England, which planned horizontal launches using a long runway. The Sutherland site has floundered and in April Virgin Orbit, which had a contract at Cornwall, filed for bankruptcy protection after an unsuccessful launch.
That has cleared the way for SaxaVord. So far, seven satellite companies, including Lockheed Martin, have signed up with the Strangs. The spaceport now has 80 employees, up from four six years ago, and around 400 investors.
The couple are looking beyond launches. They’re planning to build a 250-room hotel and a visitors centre. They also hope to include flight support services and a data-collection operation for satellite companies.
After some initial hesitation, the community has gotten fully on board. There’s hope the spaceport will bring badly needed jobs to the island and boost tourism. It could also spur long-held ambitions of building tunnels to connect Unst to the nearby island of Yell and on to the largest Shetland Island, known as the Mainland.
“We really have to take pretty much anything that comes along if there’s a development,” said Gordon Thomson, a retired teacher who has lived on Unst for 40 years. “It’s also quite a good time to be pushing for tunnels.”
Residents of Unst have had favourable things to say about the spaceport, as well as concerns about the local environment.Alamy Stock Photo
Challenges remain. Some islanders worry about the impact the launches will have on farm animals and the migratory birds that flock to Unst. Ms. Strang said the centre has carried out studies to ensure the launches don’t affect wildlife; they’ve even added a small tunnel under the road for otters to pass through.
She’s been too busy to think about the first launch next year and how she’ll feel when the countdown reaches “blast-off.”
“It’s really hard to even imagine it,” she said. “It will be very, very emotional. And then I will just be delighted that I’ve played a small part in what we’ve done.”