It’s quite a long time since I wrote about the global race to set up commercial spaceports for (sub)orbital tourism. It seems that the Singapore Spaceport is still going ahead, although I haven’t heard anything more about it in the local media. The Spaceport’s own web site has only one solitary press release, dated February 20, 2006.
Last time I posted on this topic, it seemed that Singapore would have a competitive advantage through being the only Asian provider of cheap sub-orbital flights, and thus attractive to wannabe-astronauts from all over Asia who didn’t want to go through the hassles of US Immigration. Now, it seems, I was overestimating the deterrent effect of the American border! According to Asia Times, Virgin Galactic are finding a large market in India, and their early flights are already fully booked. It looks as if Virgin Galactic are going to get first-mover advantage, and leverage their brand to capture the affluent sector of the market. How many of these will want to repeat the flight, I wonder? Will they go back to the US to do a repeat launch, or be happy to switch to Singapore? I wonder what the effects for the Singapore Spaceport will be.
[...] investors are unconvinced that there is a strong enough demand (something I was also beginning to wonder about last [...]