Artist’s impression of Prestwick Spaceport (Image: UGC)
By Kevin Dyson,
Published by Insider, 10 October 2025
Expert report sheds light on the issues impacting similar projects elsewhere
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 Reporting Service: “Prestwick is one of many spaceport concepts that will probably fold in the US, Europe and elsewhere.
“Projects based on initial public spending can sometimes escape the lens of reality, at least for a while.”
She agreed with the suggestion that the ‘glamour’ of the technology had been at the expense of a more critical view of the plan.
“Forecasting errors are the rule, not the exception, in spaceport development, with projected launch rates and revenues seldom realised,” Jones and her co-authors stated.
The report analyses more than 50 new or planned launch facilities worldwide; many of which have yet to conduct a single launch.
According to the study, the current wave of regional spaceport initiatives often rests on “inflated expectations about economic growth, prestige and tourism”.
For South Ayrshire, that description is relevant.
Prestwick’s spaceport was proposed as an £80m flagship project for the Ayrshire Growth Deal and was hailed as a cornerstone of Scotland’s new space economy.
Its first and only commercial partner, Astraius, had promised to operate horizontal launches of small satellites from modified cargo aircraft, with the first mission projected for 2023 or 2024.
However, by 2024 funding had been pulled, with South Ayrshire Council formally writing off £3.27m of preparatory spending last month after “the withdrawal of key commercial partners” and “a shifting regulatory and competitive landscape”.
Jones said that this didn’t mean that authorities like South Ayrshire should avoid investing in the space industry, but pointed out that “it was likely that success would come from regional operators starting further down the chain, through either satellite manufacturing, as a satellite operator, or a satellite application“.
She continued: “These are all closer to the continuing revenue generating potential that space can offer.
“Horizontal launch facilities have proved the most speculative of all new spaceport types, built largely on optimism following the short-lived Virgin Orbit model.”
Virgin Orbit’s 2023 bankruptcy, following a failed launch from Cornwall, left Astraius as one of the few remaining players in that niche — but with no track record of its own.
The authors also scrutinised the way local and regional governments fund such ventures through joint public-private partnerships.
See: Original Article
