Glasgow Prestwick Airport – HQ for first UK spaceplane design company
Orbital Access Ltd, the first UK spaceplane design company, will lead the development of UK designed and manufactured horizontal take off space launch systems from its new headquarters at its Prestwick Aerospace base, one of five sites in the running to become the UK’s first spaceport.
Orbital Access Ltd has been established by Stuart McIntyre, grandson of David McIntyre, the founder of Scottish Aviation, and is backed by national economic development agency, Scottish Enterprise. It will be based in the iconic Palace of Engineering at Glasgow Prestwick Airport – the site of BAE Systems’ historic regional aircraft manufacturing business Jetstream Aircraft and, before that Scottish Aviation.
Mr McIntyre said: “While a spaceport in the UK is a key piece of required infrastructure it will be of marginal value if we do not also have the industrial and technical launch systems in the UK capable of exploiting it.”
“The industrial, economic and employment dividend from the spaceport cannot be realised if all we do is host occasional US designed, built and operated systems. We have an aerospace and space industry with an enormous legacy of capability.
“We have some of the latest cutting edge technologies. All we need to do is integrate these to deliver our own capable and world class space launch systems.”