ADAMS COUNTY — Spaceport Colorado, the state’s greatest venture into space travel, is less than a year away from learning whether the Federal Aviation Administration will grant the facility a license to start launching people and satellites into the heavens.
FAA officials visiting Front Range Airport on Tuesday said the agency could make a final determination on a launch site operator license for the 3,600-acre airport southeast of Denver International Airport and 20 miles from downtown Denver by early 2018.
First, the agency needs to complete an environmental assessment of how future space vehicle operations at Spaceport Colorado will affect noise levels, air quality, historic and archaeological resources and lighting levels, among other impacts. Details on how to manage airspace between Front Range and DIA also must be scrutinized before a license is issued.
Some of those details were laid out for the public by FAA officials at a scoping meeting for the proposed facility Tuesday evening.
“This has been a lengthy process,” Dave Ruppel, Front Range Airport’s director, said Tuesday. “But it seems like now we have gotten everyone pulling in the same direction.”
That wasn’t as clear six years ago, when the spaceport concept was first introduced in Colorado. Nor was it clear in 2013, when Spaceport Colorado was getting financial support from entities such as the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Division of Aeronautics, DIA and Aurora. But there was confusion as to who was nurturing the concept and who was in charge.
The Front Range Airport Authority killed its contract with Dennis Heap, the airport’s long-time executive director and an early backer of the spaceport, in summer 2013 over a contract dispute.
Ruppel, a retired Navy aviator who also headed the Yampa Valley Regional Airport in Steamboat Springs, took over the top job at Front Range Airport in late 2014. The airport is owned by Adams County.
“We don’t have the guarantee of the license, but I feel we have a much better process in place now,” he said.
But even with operator license in hand, Ruppel said no space vehicles would be fired skyward for an additional “five to eight years” as Spaceport Colorado tries to lure commercially certified vehicles to Adams County for launch. Companies such as Virgin Galactic, Airbus and XCOR are working on vehicles that could be used to ferry tourists and mini satellites into space, as well as providing speedy suborbital passenger flight.
A 13-hour trip to Tokyo, for example, could be completed in 90 minutes on a space vehicle launched from Front Range Aiport, Ruppel said.
Space planes at Spaceport Colorado would make horizontal takeoffs and landings. In the case of one vehicle design spaceport officials have been studying closely, the vehicle would take off like a normal plane and fly 50 or more miles away from the airport on jet fuel before rocket boosters ignite and blast the vehicle into suborbital flight.
Rita Connerly, co-chairwoman of the Adams County Aerospace and Aviation Task Force, said it’s good news that the FAA is ready to pore over the environmental assessment for the spaceport. Colorado doesn’t want to fall too far behind other states that have built spaceports, she said.
There are 11 other spaceports in the United States.
“I think the state has positioned itself well for a spaceport,” Connerly said.
Vicky Lea, manager of aviation and aerospace industry for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. and Spaceport Colorado & Aeronautical Authority, agreed, pointing out that Colorado ranks second in terms of aerospace employment in the country, second to California.
She said a spaceport would bring more businesses and scientists to the area to do research and development in the sector and generate good-paying jobs for Adams County and surrounding areas. It’s something Colorado is well-equipped to take full advantage of as long as a launch facility is there to provide the necessary support.
“We would be building on the existing assets we have,” she said.
