Maritime Launch Services is moving forward on their spring construction plans at full speed after a mild winter including beginning construction on their first launch pad.
Nova Scotia-based Maritime Launch Services Inc. (MLSI) is a key part of Canada’s future space launch sector, owing to its unique location on Canada’s east coast near Canso, Nova Scotia. Though it’s slightly less efficient to launch some rockets there than nearer the equator, their specific location overlooking the Atlantic ocean is suitable for launching rockets for satellites moving in both sun-synchronous and inclined orbits. They’re also notable as potentially being Canada’s first domestic launch site in decades, and one of the world’s only privately-owned and privately-operated spaceports.
All that is in the future though. At the moment, after building enough provincial and federal government support to move forward, their key focus is on constructing the launch pads, buildings, and other infrastructure for the spaceport itself. As discussed in a recent phone interview with Stephen Matier, founder and CEO of MLSI, they’ve had a few bits of good fortune, but they’re still taking care in how they progress forward.
Warm Winter Led to Uninterrupted Construction
The lucky break was a comparatively mild winter in Nova Scotia. Matier said that they’d started road construction in September, fully expecting that they would need to take a break in the winter and finish the work when the weather warmed up, that wasn’t how things turned out. Thanks to comparatively mild weather, “we never stopped.” Their partner, Nova Construction, was able to continue the process of building roads for their 355-acre site. Matier said that “we’ve got our initial roads actually completed as of 10 days ago.”
With that early work finished, Matier said that they were already in the process of constructing their first launch pad, as part of the “phase one” where they prepare the site for small rocket launchers that require less infrastructure and operational support.
Matier said that the concrete pad for the small rockets has already had a lot of progress; the framing and rebar have been prepared, along with the conduits for future wiring. The concrete was poured a week ago, and Matier said that MLSI CCO Harvey Doane “got some pretty cool drone footage of the pad itself.” As small rockets demand much less infrastructure than medium-class rockets, this puts them well on their way to being able to start their small rocket launches this summer.
As detailed in previous SpaceQ coverage of MLSI’ small rocket launch plans, they’re planning an initial suborbital launch of a student rocket this summer. Later in the year, Reaction Dynamics will be testing their own Aurora rocket—along with its hybrid-propellant RE-201/2 engines—through a suborbital launch with a scientific payload. Then, in early 2024, Skyrora is slated to perform MLSI’s first orbital launch attempt.
And while all that’s happening, MLSI will be continuing construction in anticipation of its eventual launch of the medium-class Cyclone-4M made by their Ukrainian partners Pivdenmash and Yuzhnoye Design, and the eventual introduction of other medium-class launchers.
Phases as Processes
While the MLSI construction process can be treated as discrete “phases”—where “phase one” is when they’ve built the infrastructure to launch small-class rockets and phase two is when they’ve done the same for medium-class rockets—Matier emphasized that these aren’t discrete events, but more a pair of ongoing processes. He described the process as a “stepwise approach,” where they make progress on developing the physical site, work with their partners to ensure the launches are on schedule, and work with regulators (like Transport Canada) to ensure that the legal framework is in place well before launch.
Phase One, for example, has the iterated rockets (student suborbital, Aurora suborbital, and Skyrora orbital) not just because of scheduling happenstance, but because they reflected ongoing development of MLSI as a business and Canadian space launch as a regulatory concept. Each launch will help MLSI get their “sea legs” and sort out potential issues when the stakes are lower, and will also be the means by which they help Transport Canada and other regulatory agencies do their own development: determining the role they need to play, what they’ll require of MLSI for launches, and how Canada is going to approach the idea of becoming a country with space launch capacity. Those things will take time.
With Phase Two, the process of developing medium-class launch capabilities, they plan to continue this iterative approach. Matier said that while they were lucky with the weather, they also know that there will be setbacks, and this “stepwise” process is how they’ll ensure that incidental setbacks don’t create larger problems. He said that he could “start by building the area for the launch pad, and then…[build] more of the components for the Integration Facility.” Early on in Phase Two, he says, he expects that he “doesn’t need a full blown launch control centre with all the trappings to be able to successfully control the launch, I can do that from a smaller building.” Temporary infrastructure for launch is fine at first; the robust infrastructure will come with time. He also sees this “build what I need, as I need it” approach as a way of mitigating rising construction labour costs.
As they’ll be launching over the course of all phases of the spaceport’s development, they’ll be able to test what they’ve built, find any issues, and discover means by which they can improve the site’s efficiency and safety without costly rebuilds. This is how MLSI plans to be resilient in the face of setbacks—like the one they already received when Transportation Minister Alghabra announcement was repeatedly delayed due to COVID infection—and how they plan to overcome the fact that, as Matier acknowledged, launching medium-class rockets is a much more difficult proposition than small ones. As Matier said, “Rockets are hard…you don’t just upsize a small launcher to a medium. That’s not how it works.”
He said that Transport Canada was very supportive of this approach, as it’ll give them the time and opportunity they need to fine-tune policies and regulations.
Huge Demand for Medium-Class Launches
For MLSI, making sure they get Medium-class launch right is of critical importance, because of the immense opportunity it presents. When asked about recent stories regarding the drought of launch capacity, Matier wasn’t at all surprised. He said “if we were up and launching the Cyclone-4M today our manifest would be maxed out. Period.” “We have multi-launch term sheets we’ve signed,” he added: “we’ve announced one with Spaceflight Industries, we’ve got one in place with Precious Payload, [and] we’ve got at least two others that are in final review.”
Matier was even speculating about the potential need for multiple pads in the future. As the Cyclone-4M isn’t going to be the only medium-class launcher at MLSI—Skyrora is likely to build one and there may be others—questions were asked about whether that would have any effect on the infrastructure requirements. Matier didn’t think it would, as most of the potential rockets use liquid oxygen and kerosene as their propellants (much like the Cyclone) and aren’t physically different enough to create too many issues for the integration and launch infrastructure. If it comes up, though, he said that “they don’t have to be in the same launchpad. We have 355 acres available, we’ll look at developing potentially [up to] three launchpads within that footprint.”
That’s off in the future, though. When the time comes, he’s confident that there will be a place for MLSI, no matter which launch companies end up producing medium-class rockets. “We’ve had 12, 13 different launch companies come to us,” he said, and “we’re a launch site with access to where satellite clients want to put their stuff into space.”
Local Oxygen for Local Rockets
Finally, Matier also had some comments about another serendipitous event that may help their launch schedule. MLSI has signed a letter of intent with Everwind Fuels, a new company that’s using renewable power from creating “the largest wind farm in the western hemisphere” to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a potentially key method of replacing hydrocarbons as a portable energy source—liquid hydrogen is already a mainstay rocket propellant—and “green hydrogen” (or even fuel-grade liquid ammonia) that’s produced without any fossil fuels at all could be in huge demand.
For MLSI, though, it’s not just a green solution, but a clever solution to a more immediate problem. Everwind is, Matier said, “just down the road” at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, where they’ll be creating a large quantity of raw oxygen as a byproduct of their hydrogen and ammonia production process. Their agreement is for Everwind to compress the oxygen into a liquid and work with MLSI to transport the oxygen to the spaceport.
Matier said that “by having them provide it, our transportation costs [and] production costs are greatly reduced,” saying that most propellant manufacturers are in Quebec. Plus, the close location means there’s more room for failure; if they have to scrub a launch for some reason (like weather or a nearby boat), they’ll need tankers of liquid oxygen nearby for the recycle for the next day. Matier said that “having a near neighbour like that, that’s producing liquid oxygen, is a great addition.”
Even better that it’s green. As Mark Boggett said to SpaceQ earlier this month, tracking and managing climate change is a key driver for space investment in 2023, so green propellants are going to be attractive to climate-conscious launch customers.
Matier said that getting hydrogen from Everwind might even be a possibility, if they end up launching rockets using that as a propellant, opening up the possibility of something truly unique: completely green space launch, right from Canada’s East Coast.