Hawaii state officials are seriously considering applying to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a spaceport licence. According to local media, Hawaii has been approached by four space tourism companies wanting to launch their spaceplanes from the Pacific islands. I’m assuming that includes Rocketship Global (as their promo video was being used in the report), XCOR (as their Lynx would be more than capable of using existing runways) and possibly Virgin Galactic? Richard Branson is making moves to launch passengers through the Aurora Borealis from the Swedish town of Kiruna, why not launch passengers from a tropical location too? Makes perfect sense.
At first, I was a little sceptical about this possibility, after all who really wants spaceplanes blasting into suborbital space from one of the most beautiful locations on the planet? I’ve visited Maui and Oahu, and I would hate to see any (more) damage done to the place. However, these commercial spaceplanes aren’t exactly huge polluters (no more than your average airliner that lands at Honolulu International in any case) and the launches would be a great source of revenue for the islands in the form of taxes (as will be the case in New Mexico) and tourism. And then there’s the possibility of accessing Hawaii via suborbital flightpaths from California and Japan. Flight-time from Hawaii to mainland US will be slashed from five hours to 90 minutes. If that means I can leave my house and be on Waikiki in about two hours… who am I to stand in the way of progress?
Unfortunately a lot of misplaced hope and optimism is placed on commercial spaceflight, so we’ll have to see how the Hawaii Spaceport idea develops before we go getting too excited…
For more, check out Space Tourist Suborbital Flight from Hawaii?…
astroengine.com 
Hawaii seems like a good choice for a spaceport to me. Shoot, Hawaii is so isolated that it could even eventually make the international airport there obsolete once the cost starts to come down. One spaceport on the US west coast, one on the US east coast, one in Europe, one in China or Japan, one in Australia, and one in South America.
Anywhere in the world in less than 5 hours? Same day package delivery anywhere in the world? Yeah, that would rock. You can keep your flying cars. I want a spaceport!
I’m assuming that Hawaii will be declining interview requests from the Orlando Sentinel!
that’s ridiculous…i can’t believe they even bothered thinking about that idea! we have a lot of other problems to deal with let alone space flight. haha
Hawaii has been approached by four space tourism companies wanting to launch their spaceplanes from the Pacific islands. Assuming that includes Rocketship Global (as their promo video was being used in the report), XCOR (as their Lynx would be more than capable of using existing runways) and possibly Virgin Galactic? Richard Branson is making moves to launch passengers through the Aurora Borealis from the Swedish town of Kiruna, why not launch passengers from a tropical location too? Makes perfect sense.