Prestwick Spaceport failure 'echoes global trend'

A space industry expert has outlined many of the issues that led to the collapse of the Prestwick Spaceport project.

Karen L. Jones, senior project leader at the Aeropace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy in the United States, is one of the authors of Spaceportopia: Lessons from the Global Proliferation of Launch Sites and said that the failure of the project echoed issues being faced globally.

In the report, she and her colleagues warn that governments and councils are pouring millions into prestige projects that rarely deliver the promised returns.

Many of the issues raised in the report mirror the problems faced by the Prestwick project – which was a key part of the Ayrshire Growth Deal before being formally scrapped last month.

Jones told the Local Democracy Report