Meeting of the Parliament 28 April 2015
The UK space sector has a turnover of £11.3 billion and employs 34,000 people. The target is to grow our UK space industry to £40 billion turnover in the next 15 years and to create 100,000 jobs in the process. The major barrier to that growth is the lack of a UK spaceport. While America and Russia lead the way in this industry, we in the United Kingdom must create our own spaceport, and we must do so soon in order to capture our share of the growing satellite launch and deployment market, and to position ourselves for space travel and space tourism in due course.
If we accept that we must develop a spaceport, the next question is where is best suited to our doing so. I suggest that the location of choice in Scotland and the United Kingdom is Prestwick airport. First, Prestwick airport is already home to a diversified manufacturing aerospace industry and a maintenance, repair and overhaul hub. There are more than 3,000 jobs in our world-class aerospace hub and its supply chain at Prestwick. Creating, building and maintaining pioneering and existing aircraft is part of our DNA at Prestwick and throughout Ayrshire. The Twin Pioneer and the Jetstream 31 and 41 aircraft are perhaps the most iconic examples of that.
Our local community has always welcomed innovation at our airport and in our aerospace industry. It takes particular pride in Prestwick’s history and a keen and supportive interest in its future. More than 800 acres of land is available to and used by this already diversified airport, and significant land is available for future growth. First-class road and rail links now exist; motorway connections from Glasgow and central Scotland are available to the front door of Prestwick airport and there are now, in addition, direct rail links to the airport from Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Prestwick already handles civil passengers, freight, United Kingdom and NATO military aircraft, as well as search and rescue from HMS Gannet. NATS Ltd has one of its two UK centres less than a kilometre from the airport, where it employs more than 700 dedicated professionals in the air traffic control industry. With clear and uncluttered airspace all the way to the north pole, Prestwick is also ideally placed within the United Kingdom for high inclination polar launches.