Front Range Airport Could Become Launch Facility

Those skeptical of the potential for commercial space flight to become a major industry certainly have their counterparts among state and local governments. Colorado is the latest state to apply to the FAA for status as a "spaceport state."

Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, tells the Denver Post that Colorado, which already claims more space-related industry than any state except California, could gain even more high-paying technical jobs by turning the Front Range Airport, 19 miles east of Denver, into a launch facility - "It would be another star in our sky." (Airport entrance photo by J. Pock.)

Elaine Thorndike, chief executive of the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology, tells the Post, "companies that are either suppliers to the commercial space market or part of the aerospace sector in general are extremely excited." Thorndike is overseeing the redevelopment of an old Hewlett Packard campus in Loveland, CO into an Aerospace and Clean Energy Park.

Clark is a recent convert to the spaceport idea, having said as recently as a year and a half ago that such a facility in Colorado didn't make sense with Spaceport America just down the road in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Developing horizontal launch technology is what changed his mind.

Formal estimates of the costs and benefits of converting Front Range into a spaceport have not yet been done.

FMI: www.spacecolorado.org/news/governor-hickenlooper-announces-colorado-will-seek-spaceport-designation.html