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Scotland: the land of mist and mountains long associated with kilts, bagpipes, haggis ... and now space launches. Timed to coincide with the Queen's Speech to Parliament, British startup Orbex announced that it will build a new 2,000 m² (21,500 ft²) rocket production facility in Scotland and is scouting for a launch site on the north coast of the country to send small payloads into low Earth orbit.
The announcement comes on the tails of Orbex making a private presentation of its launch technology to potential investors at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport. It already has a 1,200 m² (12,900 ft²) factory in England, where it is building launch vehicle subsystems, and is now seeking to expand north of the border for the assembly and launching of the completed rocket.
The goal is to create a booster that can lift payloads of up to 150 kg (330 lb) into low Earth orbit (LEO) and, eventually, to send up payloads of up to 220 kg (485 lb) into LEO, polar, or sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes of up to 1,250 km (775 mi). To help achieve this, Orbex is working with regional and national agencies to draft detailed development proposals in line with the UK government's 2017 Spaceflight Bill intended to promote launch sites in the British Isles.
The inaugural rocket will carry the tartan of which clan?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:40PM
Rockets are about delta-v not energy. You can get a significantly higher payload with that small velocity boost. Keep in mind that you're not just increasing the velocity of your payload, but also the velocity of the entire, fully fueled rocket at launch, which is typically 30 to 50 times the mass of the payload! So that 0.2% is more like 6-10% of the total kinetic energy of the payload in orbit.