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United States

Maine is One Step Closer To Establishing Aerospace Industry (apnews.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Maine is closer to launching its space program after Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill to create the Maine Space Port, a law aimed at growing the state's aerospace industry. From a report: Mills signed the bill into law on April 19, creating a public-private partnership that would build launch sites, data networks and operations to send satellites into space, The Portland Press Herald reported Sunday. Most of the work accomplished at the program will be through the creation of the Maine Space Complex which will be built at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station within the next decade. The complex will oversee three entities including a computer center and satellite launch and operations sites. Terry Shehata, director of the Maine Space Grant Consortium, said the spaceport would be one of the first in the U.S. to launch satellites, conduct data analysis and provide education to students. The consortium is the NASA-funded nonprofit spearheading the spaceport complex.
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Maine is One Step Closer To Establishing Aerospace Industry More

Maine is One Step Closer To Establishing Aerospace Industry

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  • It seems like a great idea but I wonder how much the weather that Maine gets, including some extreme storms and some rough winters, would hamper efforts to be a good location for a spaceport...

    • It seems like a great idea

      If it was a great idea, profit-seeking capitalists would be investing their own money, and taxpayer subsidies wouldn't be needed.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        exactly, its a dumb idea spearheaded by a twit who wants a monorail in their 1 horse state

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Maine - has two big problems.

          It has a lack of diversity of industry. Its basically tourism, timber, and fishing.

          It has a rapidly aging population across most of the state except Portland, where it has the opposite problem a huge influx for young but unskilled immigrants. Who are not qualified to do much other scrub toilets and fry seafood at the touristy places. The first demographic there decreasing in ability to support the economy every day and the second unlikely to ever be able to do so.

          Maine really ne

      • A project can be profitable to society without being attractive to entrepreneurs and investors. Infrastructure and militaries frequently fall into this category, and yet if you didn't have them we'd all be substantially poorer as a result.
    • I assume they're talking about small launchers that are operationally flexible, not big missions needing crazy-precise timing. Given that the most active launch facility in the world is in Hurricane Alley (the Florida cape), storms aren't as debilitating as one would think. They plan around the weather, and the same with snow: There's an active launch facility in Alaska, though its level of activity is relatively low. Maine is certainly not Alaska.

      • Presumably they are planning for primarily polar orbit launches. As the highest latitude point short of Alaska, it makes sense and is significantly better than Florida or even Vandenberg. So mostly government launches and maybe some actual satellites.

      • storms aren't as debilitating as one would think. They plan around the weather, and the same with snow

        Yeah I was thinking they have a lot of storms to deal with now, but they also have regular separation between storms.

        Whereas in Maine, you can have debilitating snow that lasts months - not in terms of actual weather but in terms of accumulation that is hard to keep areas clear of, and makes transport to the site trickier.

        But perhaps as the other responder noted, the more northerly location will be enough

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Toad-san ( 64810 )

      I passed through Brunswick NAS four times for the Navy's Winter Survival School. (I was an Army ROTC instructor at UMass, and we took selected students there every year.) Colder than HELL during Christmas Break; can't imagine any sort of outdoors rocketry at that place! I know they managed to keep the antisub 4-engined aircraft (Neptunes?) flying, but I sure didn't envy them that job.

      • Colder than HELL during Christmas Break; can't imagine any sort of outdoors rocketry at that place!

        Well, maybe the closer to the temperature of outer space you keep the rocket the better... :-)

  • Ah, yes (Score:3)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @06:38PM (#62482432) Journal

    A community I have some connection to replatted the airport into a Spaceport, encouraged by an economic development sales tax set aside, in order to expand local business opportunities.

    We lured a couple or three Space Venture outfits in through tax abatements and outright tax fund giveaways. Companies took the money and perks, and either went out of business or relocated.

    Worked about as well as a compass in space.

  • There are reasons why most of the world's launch facilities are close to the equator. Hmm I don't think Maine is. I wonder how much stock the Gov's family has in the companies that will benefit.

    • There are reasons why most of the world's launch facilities are close to the equator. Hmm I don't think Maine is.

      Not yet anyway, but sooner or later an asteroid will strike the Earth and knock it off its current axis. Maine will already be set to go. :-)

    • Look up which US state is the closest to Africa.

    • Maine is 15 degrees farther north than Kennedy Space Center, which is also not on the equator. It makes a modest velocity increment difference, not a critical factor. Being able to launch due east over an ocean is a much bigger one.

      • Re:Close to the equator (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @08:03PM (#62482562)

        We're all nerds here, so let's do the math:

        Rotational velocity at the surface is proportional to the cosine of the latitude.

        Latitude of Kennedy space center: 28.6 degrees.
        Latitude of Maine space center: 43.9 degrees

        Rotational speed at the equator: 1670 km/hr.
        Rotational speed at KSC: 1670 * cos(28.6) = 1466 km/hr
        Rotational speed at MSC: 1670 * cos(43.9) = 1203 km/hr
        Orbital speed = 11,300 km/hr

        Delta-V from KSC: 11,300 - 1466 = 9834
        Delta-V from MSC: 11,300 - 1203 = 10097

        Google says the exhaust velocity of a SpaceX Falcon is 3 km/sec = 10800 km/hr, so let's use that.

        Plugging these numbers into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation [wikipedia.org] gives us:

        Ratio of fuel needed = exp(10097/10800) / exp(9834/10800) = 2.547 / 2.486 = 1.025

        So only 2.5% more fuel. That is a much smaller difference than I expected.

        • Now do it for polar orbits.

          • Yes, there's little difference for polar orbits. However, those don't seem to be very popular at the moment. This entire endeavor seems to be an attempt to funnel federal government money to some company "partnering" with local government in Maine. We have the same nonsense here with HOT lanes with the added bonus that if the private company doesn't make the money they expect, the local governments have to reimburse for the "losses."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dmomo ( 256005 )

          Assuming that the percentage is correct, you could then compare added fuel costs to the cost of a launch being delayed by weather. Then factor in the chances of that happening at each location. There's a chance that price increase is negligible.

          • Assuming that the percentage is correct, you could then compare added fuel costs to the cost of a launch being delayed by weather. Then factor in the chances of that happening at each location. There's a chance that price increase is negligible.

            If you think in terms of "fuel cost" - as in the dollars spent to buy fuel - you do not grasp space launch economics. For all practical purposes the fuel in rocket is free - the cost of building the launcher, and operating the launch facility is more than 99% of the expense. SpaceX is starting to push up the fuel cost fraction, but it will be years before it becomes significant.

            The effect of that 2.5% fuel penalty is a reduction in the payload weight for a given orbit, and thus the label cost of launching a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PJ6 ( 1151747 )
          I think it's more than just losing a portion of the tangential boost.

          For geostationary orbit, it can take quite a bit of delta-V correcting inclination at the descending node if you launch too far North.

          At least I remember that being expensive on Kerbin.

    • For equatorial/geostationary launches you'd be right, though you can still do it if you don't mind taking a moderate hit to your payload capacity. However I think they have a pretty good coastline for polar launches which don't really get any advantage from the spin of the planet. But I have to wonder about the viability of any kind of recovery operations for reusable launchers as SpaceX specifically avoids the NE coast of the US during part of the year because of rough seas.

  • spaceport would be one of the first in the U.S. to launch satellites, conduct data analysis and provide education to students.

    um humons have been launching satellites since the 1950's, people have been doing data analysis since before Jesus, and for fuck sake visit a school once in your life

  • I hope they're ready for a long, drawn out fight with the NIMBYs/"Environmentalists". Texas has quite a history with rockets/space development and a very supportive government/locals but it's still taking SpaceX forever to get the FAA/Army Corps/EPA to approve anything. Maine on the other hand last I heard has trouble even building wind turbines Main prohibits offshore wind [pressherald.com]

  • A good friend of mine is from Maine (and she lived in NJ for a long time before moving to Florida) and she was not fond of the weather there although there are three different climate sections to Main, the northern interior, the southern interior and the coast. Northern Maine doesn't seem like a good location as it's in the mountains and weather can be really tricky with many days in the winter below 10 degrees and they get 7 to 10 feet of snow annually but that's an average and severe blizzards can happen.

  • Along with biotechnology, a space elevator, world leadership in nanotechnology and solar energy and mRNA manufacturing and next generation battery tech and flying cars for every resident of Maine!! They also plan to displace Hollywood as the entertainment center of the world, they just haven't made the announcement yet.

    Sorry bozos, but every town, city, county and state in the USA has the same idea and they are in line ahead of you. Along with around a zillion other locations worldwide. There may be a lot of horse-shit, but there is not going to be a pony for Christmas this year.

    BTW, the niche market for stupid far north rocket launch sites [wikipedia.org] has already been filled. That's how late to the party Maine is.

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