It's pretty far north for a space port; generally you want to be as close to the equator as possible to take advantage of the increased energy/velocity emparted by the spin of the earth.

I was thinking what David was thinking. Though Cape Breton is on a comparable latitude to Baikonur so, assuming we are using Soyuz-level rocket power and are mainly looking to be bus drivers for Russian-preferred orbits, there may be niche to be filled.

No more goin' down the road* ~ Astronautin' jawbs for all!

* too hard to explain, sorry US readers

I recall a song with this chorus:<blockquote><i>Jobs for your mother,
Jobs for your dad,
Jobs for the living
Jobs for the dead,</i></blockquote>

LOL ... What Mike said ...

It might be time for Tantramar city to be dusted off. Think of the economic spin-offs...

Where/when was the Electrohome TV factory thingy?

Electrohome I think was a NS booddoggle in around 1970 and I think it was based on an electronics plant going into Kings County as I have a dim recollection of going past an electrohome sign somewhere and older folk around me going mental over the waste.

Jimmy Sprung comes back from the mists of cucumber oblivion to launch orbiting greenhouses so that cosmonauts can get their greens??

Totally worthy of federal funding to support regional economic development.

Ahhh, Sprung Greenhouse; I remember it well. The first night it lit up the sky glowed white -- 9/11 was called from all over the city. We were on the other side of a hill about 8km away and could see the light. And that was _1 of 6_ of the greenhouses. Near the site it was day all night.

An Air Canada pilot said you could fly from Gander to St. John's by the light; A Canadian spokesperson replied that Canadian didn't need a greenhouse to navigate to St. John's! (true story).

Had a friend who worked there who was convinced it was a good idea. Bizarre.

I still want one of these babies.

I remember seeing one sitting in my Annapolis Valley village. Gull wings. It was about the time the Mazda dealership was advertising the wonder that was the Wankle Rotary Engine.

'Are you easily embarrassed? It's just part of growing up British......wankle rotary engine....'
Um, OK, so I cannot remember the rest of that Monty Python thing, but wankle rotary engine sounds saucy, in its way.

This is the bestest regional development plan ever. Spacecraft are fairly sensitive to rain; not so much while sitting on the pad, but during boost / acceleration. Due to the speeds involved simple raindrops can actually pit the skin of the launch vehicle during boost/ascent. Certain temperature and humidity levels can create ice on the vehicle that may flake off and damage control surfaces during launch. All kinds of wacky stuff can go wrong.

Cape Breton gets about 1500-1600mm of rainfall, on average, per year, whereas Cape Canaveral gets around 1310mm per year. There's a lot of fog, too from the Labrador current mixing with the Gulf Stream -- that might create a lot of icing conditions on the LOX tanks... They will have to install some very sophisticated doppler radar and lightning detection systems all over the site. Should be interesting to see if it all pans out.

They should think more along the lines of a space elevator, I'd say. I see more of a new twist on SETI with an orbiting Sprung Space Beacon of sorts. Why search for them? Let them come to us. It's a push vs pull strategy thing.

Probably a clever front to squeeze money from the NS government to fund a 300 acre grow-op for a bunch of Chicago boys. "No Constable you cannot come in - highly confidential space work going on today. Come back in 60 days for a full tour and a free flight to Uranus. And stop that chopper flying over top of us or you might get hit by a test rocket"

I saw a rocket on a stick in Quebec last June. A rocketsicle!

http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/star_trek_insp.html

Tee hee! Space travel!
OK, gotta get some work done now...

In case this does actually take off, we need to start developing clever seafood-and-rocket nicknames for Cape Breton ASAP.

I am digging Mike's space elevator plan. But only if I get cucumbers from orbit. In bilingual, metric packaging.

Ooo - seafood space rocket names - that's fun! How 'bout the Cohog V Solid Rocket Booster?

That's "Quahog V", Paul.

Naming the site after Gen John Cabot Trail would be a good thing. The Coke Ovens rocket booster? The Men Of The Deepspace astronaut lounge?

I would think adding a "Hall of the Clans" module to the ISS would now be in order, or, at least, polite.

Thanks Mike, Paul the Enjinear.

It is pronounced "co-hog" in NS and "qwah-hahg" in PEI, Paul, so you have fallen into a well travelled trap.

Excellent news - I can blame it on my Dartmouth upbringing.

That would be "DERT-muth".

I worked in an office once where all the printers were named for Canadian towns. One day someone asked where Dartmouth was. I had to say "across the bridge from Halifax." No one laughed then, either.

As my brother once said, since the municipalities amalgamated, Dartmouth is now just a bad neighbourhood in Halifax. 8-)

Maybe so, but my brother and I are two Halifax boys who now live in that bad neighbourhood and quite enjoy it.

Actually, I think the amalgamation worked in that respect ~ I have changed my thinking over the last dozen years, going from the 3 main separate entities that surround the harbour (Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford) to really just thinking of them as different areas of the one city. Now, Sackville... I don't know about Sackville...

Brother the Middle and I lived in a place in North Dartmouth back around 1987 which had a splendid view of Tufts Cove smokestack that features in <i>Trailer Park Boys</i>. One day, watching the news I saw live video of a gunman in a standoff near our place. Then I look out the window and got a better view.

That's *North Dartmouth*.

So is Lake Echo part of the greater urban blog now? It's been a while since I was back.

The city is now basically the entire former county as I understand it.

She runs as far as the eye can ecum secum. That is, from the middle of Hubbards out to Ecum Secum. Not sure how far it extends towards the airport.

Here, it does include the airports and all the Musquodoboits.

http://halifaxinfo.com/HfxRegionalMunicipality.pdf

"airport".

That's right some jeesly big.

The girl who gave me the tour of city hall said it's the same size geographically as PEI.