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1. Who constructed Spaceport Sweden?
In 2006 four parties in the town of Kiruna signed an agreement to use their joint resources to create Spaceport Sweden:
Swedish Space Corporation (Esrange Space Center)
The LFV Group (Kiruna Airport)
Icehotel
Progressum (business development in Kiruna)
2. When was the official start of Spaceport Sweden?
Spaceport Sweden was inagurated in January 2007.
3. Why a Spaceport Sweden in Kiruna?
The town of Kiruna, where Spaceport Sweden is located, has been a space city since the end of the 1950s. It started with a group of space physicists, continued with launches of sounding rockets and large stratospheric balloons adn then satellite operations and control and test operations of new aerospace vehicles.
The town hosts a lot of infrastructure related to both space and tourism activities which makes Kiruna well prepared for space tourism.
4. What kind of infrastructure is already in place?
SSC Esrange Space Center have offered suborbital launches since 1966. Knowledge and innovative services for communicating with sounding rockets, stratospheric balloons, UAV:s to satellites and other space vehicles.
Kiruna Airport is an accessible airport with a 2500 m runway, wide range of serivices and a huge hangar to host almost any aerospace vehicle.
Icehotel with its unique hotel build in snow and ice, in addition to a large bouquet of exiting adventures, both during winter and summer, in Swedish Lapland – offers together with Lapland Resorts in the mountains world class products above the Arctic Circle.
5. How and why was the contact with Virgin Galactic achieved?
Spaceport Sweden contacted VG in early 2006 to present the idea of the spaceport in the land of the Northern Light.
Representives for VG have then been to Kiruna many times and already in an early stage they realized that Spaceport Sweden had a very special and unique touch to offer.
“Spaceport Sweden is very interesting for us thanks to their expertise in space technology and innovative thinking, as well as the fact that Kiruna can offer unique experiences such as the northern lights and the Icehotel during winter and the midnight sun during summer“, says Mr. Will Whitehorn, former president of Virgin Galactic.
6. When are Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flights to space supposed to be launched from Spaceport Sweden?
As soon as the vehicle is developed and testprogramme finished, which is an ongoing process at Mojave Air & Space Port in CA, USA.
When the first commercial flights are taking place in USA, the next step will be to start fly the spaceship from other parts of the world and Spaceport Sweden is on the top of the list. There is several milstones to pass until this is realized.
See the interview with Sir Richard Branson here.
7. How do you sell your tickets?
Spaceport Sweden is not an agent for any space ticket that are sold today.
They are sold by accredited travel agencies that are collaborating with f eks Virgin Galactic or other spaceship operators planning to fly from Spaceport Sweden. ICEHOTEL is one of these agents, so make your reservation with them!
8. You are advertising the Spaceport Sweden with the beauty of the undisturbed nature.
Although of no technical consequence for the overall global CO2 problems – are you prepared to counteract criticism of environmentalists?
The environmental impact is a question that we consider as most important. We believe that all efforts possible should be made to find new and more environment friendly ways to access space. The only way to achieve this is to continue to develop new space vehicles and new fuels
The answers to questions about SpaceShipTwo and the flight is found on the Virgin Galactic web site
For example:
– Will tourist travelers officially become an astronaut?
– How can I buy a space ticket?
– How much does a space ticket cost?
– How frequently will the flights bee?
– How many passengers and pilots will there be on each flight?
– What does the space flight consist of?
– What does the space ship look like?
– How does the training before a flight proceed?
– What environmental impact will SpaceShipTwo have?
– Etc.