Indo-American’s firm to build space launch facility in Canada

TORONTO: Planetspace, the US-Canadian consortium co-promoted by Indian-American entrepreneur, Chirinjeev Kathuria, has signed an agreement with Canada’s Nova Scotia province to build a space launching facility.

According to the agreement, Nova Scotia would set aside 300 acres of land on the island Cape Breton off the Canadian coast for the facility, reports said. PlanetSpace is also in talks with the Canadian Space Agency for Canada’s first commercial manned space programme, for which the new facility would be constructed.

“The facility will see orbital flights, similar to the Kennedy Space Center,” Mr Kathuria told newspersons. PlanetSpace estimates it will cost about $200m to build the spaceport at a site north-west of a town called Sydney Mines on Cape Breton. Rockets launched from Cape Breton, which is at the same latitude as the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the site of Russia’s Soyuz launches, would require less fuel to reach the International Space Station (ISS) than those launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, US, according to a report in the New Scientist Space website.

The company, according to the report, wants to also build a spacecraft that could bring crew and goods to the ISS. Mr Kathuria said the company was trying to negotiate an agreement to get technical help from the US space agency NASA in building such a vehicle.

PlanetSpace expects to fly 2,000 space tourists in the first five years and generate revenue of $200m in the fifth year. Fares will start at $250,000 for a sub-orbital flight, which will include 14 days of training.

“It’s an extraordinary view, you’re weightless for four-five minutes, you see the earth from the same view that the shuttle astronauts do, and it doesn’t cost millions of dollars to go into orbit,” Geoff Sheerin, the other promoter of PlanetSpace, told newspersons.

Mr Kathuria is no stranger to privately funded space flight. He was a founding director of MirCorp, the company that made history on April 4, ‘00, when it launched the world’s first privately funded manned space programme and sent Dennis Tito to space as Earth’s first space tourist.

Born in New Delhi, Mr Kathuria is a physician by profession and holds an MBA degree. He has been involved with successful business ventures in the US telecommunications and the healthcare sectors.