Colorado hopes to have an answer from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on its spaceport site operator license application later this year, according to a key official.
Spaceport Colorado Airport Director Dave Ruppel told Defense Daily Wednesday that paperwork was submitted a year ago and now Colorado is going through the pre-review process. The FAA, he said, takes your application and runs it past other FAA divisions to evaluate concerns. Once that takes place, Ruppel said an environmental assessment begins to evaluate whether an applicant can operate one type of space launch vehicle from a site safely from environmental and public safety perspectives.
Colorado wants to use its Front Range Airport east of Denver to add FAA-licensed suborbital spaceflight capabilities to its current general aviation operations. Colorado envisions Front Range Airport as a horizontal launch facility, utilizing FAA-licensed reusable launch vehicles that would takeoff and land from existing runways.
Colorado envisions the spaceport serving markets like scientific research, education and space tourism in the short term and point-to-point, high speed, suborbital transportation to other international spaceports in the future. Colorado would not operate vertical launch vehicles or experimental vehicles at Front Range Airport.
Ruppel said once the environmental assessment is signed by the FAA, there is window of about 180 days that will concurrently have public assessment of the environmental impact application as well as formal review by the FAA. Ruppel said Colorado is at the end of the pre-review period and is awaiting signature from FAA Associated Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) George Nield on the environmental assessment. This, Ruppel said, would move Colorado into the formal review timeframe.
Ruppel believes a big advantage Front Range Airport has is that little infrastructure will need to be built as it already has two 8,000 foot runways as well as instrument landing procedures and ramp areas and facilities. Once the airport lands a launch provider, Ruppel said Colorado will have to add some concrete pads for fueling and operations as oxidizers in propellant tend to burn when they hit asphalt, necessitating concrete. Depending on which fueling an operator might use, Ruppel said Colorado might have to add some additional propellant storage tanks, but these are decisions to be made further down the road he said.