Spaceport Sweden experienced a couple of fruitful days over at the international Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) 2008 in Las Cruses, New Mexico.

-We strongly feel that Spaceport Sweden is well on track and in some parts even at the forefront, says Bengt Jaegtnes, vice chairman of Spaceport Sweden. Spaceport Sweden has the major part of the infrastructure already established, which is of huge importance regarding both investments and being ready to start up space operations. We still have some “paintings” to do, but that is a lesser priority for the moment. The focus will be to work on the regulatory issues and to continue the business process. Our contact with other players in the field has strengthened remarkably, especially our relationship to Spaceport America, which was one of our goals for this journey. Spaceport Sweden consists of four dedicated partners with two strong brands that are well respected on the international market – Swedish Space Corporation and ICEHOTEL. We are well on track in creating a third strong brand in Spaceport Sweden and our vision is rapidly taking shape - to become Europe’s most obvious place for personal space flights. Many interesting topics were discussed and Dan Barry, NASA Astronaut, shared his experiences of space journeys and inspired us all in many ways. Space tourism is not only about developing new technologies, designing new spacecrafts driven by more environment friendly fuels or national/international regulations. - A great part of this fantastic journey is about evolution and expanding the frontiers towards space. A domain that already supplies mankind with a range of applications that we more or less take for granted, says Johanna Bergstrom-Roos, information manager at Spaceport Sweden. - Space tourism is about more than giving people the experience of space travel, it is also an important new driver for the expansion of humanity into space, something which will benefit everyone on Earth," said George Whitesides, Senior Advisor to Virgin Galactic. Bringing the benefits of space down to earth has often, if not always, been the most important goal for space missions. Today we consider space technology as obvious and rely on it in our everyday lives: telecommunication, navigation, weather forecast, security and safety services, environment surveillance, climate observations as well as space being a unique environment for scientific measurements, just to mention a few of them. ISPCS 2008 was all about bringing people together, sharing experiences and discussing common issues in a most fruitful way. Spaceport Sweden is most grateful to Pat Haynes and her crew for organising this fantastic event. We also thank Steve Landeene and his team from Spaceport America for open and constructive discussions. Many thanks!

The Spaceport Sweden team at ISPCS.(see names) Bengt Jaegtnes during his presentation. "Old" and "New" space met in many ways. Bengt Jaegtnes and Johanna Bergström-Roos, Spaceport Sweden, chatting to Michael Blum, one of Virgin Galactic's coming travelers.