STANDARD BLADE B R I G H T O N
SERVING THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1903
75cI
VOLUME 117
Issue 50
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2020
Colorado’s space race taking off Colorado Air and Spaceport officially signs agreement to build a spaceplane BY BELEN WARD BWARD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Colorado has made its giant leap towards the future of passenger space travel to Europe within an hour by 2028. The Colorado Air and Spaceport, Director Dave Ruppel signed an agreement with Shuji Ogawa, CEO, and CTO, PD AeroSpace, LTD Dec. 2 to start the process to develop a fully-reusable horizontal suborbital passenger space plane called Pegasus at its Nagoya, Japan facilities. “This morning we signed this important dream agreement. It marks an important step in the process of turning our facility at Colorado Air and Spaceport into a world-class point of operations for our Aerospace Partners, like PD Aerospace reaction engines and many more,” said Jim Siedlecki Adams County Director of Public Information. Ogawa, in his Nagoya, Japan headquarters, signed a Japanese language copy of the agreement while Adams County Manager Raymond Gonzales signed the English language copy during the Zoom meeting while Adams County Commissioners watched. Then, both men documents on the Zoom screen in celebration of a new frontier. According to Ogawa, space planes would fly up to 34,000 feet outside the Earth’s atmosphere, spending between four and eight minutes in zero gravity. Then, as the earth
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Colorado Air and Spaceport Director Dave Ruppel and the Weld County Commissioners traveled to Nagoya, Japan to sign the letter of intent, and to meet the PD Aerospace staff in Hekinan city, which is just outside of Nagoya. Japan. The group is standing behind an example of an experimental model of a X02A high speed flight plane. COURTESY OF PDAS
rotates, the space plane will fly back down and could land anywhere in Europe within 60 to 90 minutes. The long-term objectives are to build a space hotel and do space mining. Important milestones
In 2011 Adams County began its quest for a spaceport site operator’s license through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) office of commercial space. The spaceport site license was awarded in August of 2018 to the former Front Range Airport in Watkins, Colorado. Former Front Range Airport is located 35 minutes from downtown Denver it was renamed Colorado Air and Spaceport.
“With a robust Aerospace industry in Colorado there was immediate interest from potential Partners here in America, in the state, and across the globe by the spring of 2019,” said Siedlecki. Later in the spring of 2019, Colorado Air and Spaceport received its operator’s license. So, spaceport and Weld County officials traveled to the research and development facility and met with the PD Aerospace staff in Hekinan city, which is just outside of Nagoya, Japan. The PD Aerospace vehicles launch profile matched the license for Colorado air and Spaceport for a horizontal takeoff and landing. There will be no vertical vehicle landings
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at the site. “It was their team’s ambition and aspiration that led to the signing of a letter of intent in Tokyo,” said Siedlecki. “As of Dec. 2, we’re excited to announce that we are advancing that relationship with PD Aerospace leaders from these two entities that signed a memorandum of understanding. It will outline PD Aerospace’s intentions to define its mutual roles and milestones to implement our partnership and collaboration. Also, it begins coordination with the United States Federal Aviation Administration to begin their test flights here in the U.S,” SEE SPACEPORT, P5
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