The team placed a heavy reliance on strategies and spaceport planning concepts and findings developed from Foster+Partners detailed knowledge base developed through work on Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose built commercial spaceport, XArc’s work performed on the Houston Spaceport project, and Mott MacDonald’s extensive aviation consultancy experience. Based on XArc’s body of work, the team concluded the coastal location of the Houston Spaceport together with the City of Houston’s vision and plans for converting an existing general aviation aerodrome into a commercial spaceport provided the best benchmark for development of site selection criteria and spaceport model for implementing a successful and economically viable UK Spaceport.
The site assessments were performed for 8 shortlisted spaceport sites based on an analysis of certain Key Performance Indicators.