The series entrepreneur Frank Strang, who died at the age of 67 of esophagus cancer, took an unprecedented opportunity to deliver the first approved space for vertical launches in Western Europe, surmounting multiple barriers along the way.
Having acquired a RA RAF station disused at the northern point of the Shetland Islands a decade earlier – without any Spaceports thought – in 2017, Strang had produced the potential of its assets while the government sought to promote a launch capacity in the United Kingdom.
Long hair and co-boués, Strang has made their way through the corridors of power to persuade the government, regulators and private investors that the response resided in the old base of Saxa Vord on the island of UNST. Step by step, he and his small team overcome security, planning and political challenges while walking a striped financial rope to maintain the living vision.
One of the most improbable delays came from the historic environment in Scotland on the grounds that the launch site would mean the demolition of an old radar station which had been designated “a monument of national meaning”. The Quanto finally withdrew its objection, recognizing the national importance of spaceport.
Saxavord Spaceport was authorized in 2023 by the civil aviation authority and the first launch is due in the coming months, international customers in the civil and military sectors have registered.
It is poignant that Strang is not there to attend the peak of his efforts; His diagnosis of cancer came only two months before his death.
The base of Saxa Vord Raf had closed in 2006 and was bought shortly after by Frank and his wife then, Debbie. The site included 23 houses and became an ecotourism center with accommodation, a restaurant and a bar. They diversified into an installation company, providing up to 2,000 oil workers from the Sullom Voe terminal on the Shetland continent with housing and catering, and founded the northern Gin Distillery in the United Kingdom, in UNST, in 2014.
The bulb’s time occurred when the British government ordered the scepter report to advise the potential for the establishment of a vertical launch site in the north of Scotland. He concluded that “the Shetland Islands have the best orbital access, but the remote site means that it is logistically the most difficult”.
The Strangs, as well as a former RAF fighter pilot, Scott Hammond, founded Shetland Space Center in 2017 (of which I became a director later); He was renamed Saxavord Spaceport in 2021. The challenges, as well as the distant place, also included the fact that the Scottish government put its weight and money behind a virgin site on the continent of Sutherland, near land belonging to Anders Holch Povlsen, a Danish businessman who has many interests in North of Scotland.
The well -founded environmental objections of POVLSEN to the Sutherland option have become enthusiastic unreservedly for Saxavord and, as the investment need increased to finance its construction, support and faith supported in Strang’s ability to offer the fair on the road.
“Against the chances,” said Povlsen, “and with many opposite winds, even some unfair, he built the solid foundations of what will probably become the largest commercial space in Europe. No matter what’s going on, many people, including me, will stay behind Frank, do our best to make sure that Saxavord becomes the success for which it is put. ”
Hammond, who succeeded Frank as managing director, said: “We are determined to make the leader of British Europe in the vertical launch space. It will be Frank’s heritage for Shetland, for Scotland and the United Kingdom. ”
Frank was born and spent his first years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where his father, Tom, was a professor of physical education. His mother, Barbara, also a teacher, died at the age of 13. The family had its roots in the Highlands, and Frank finished schooling at the Dingwall Academy, Ross-Shire. He then graduated in the EP of the Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow.
After a teaching of spells, he was accepted for training at RAF College Cranwell and joined the service as responsible for physical education based in Lossiemouth, Moray, where he met Debbie Hope, a colleague officer of the RAF; They were married in 1991. Part of the role of Frank resides in relations with the community and in 1994, the year of his departure from the RAF, he was appointed MBE for a collection of charities. He was also coach of the Scottish freestyle ski team for five years.
He left the service after suffering an injury in a parachuting accident. Its first commercial enterprise was to promote the American region of New England as a winter sports destination for British skiers.
This took Frank to a redevelopment project of a former military airport near Boston, who opened his eyes to similar possibilities in the United Kingdom, while the Ministry of Defense eliminated real estate assets. These were continued with mixed results, but its most fateful decision turned out to be the purchase of Saxa Vord.
The director general of the Shetland Islands Council, Maggie Sandison, who was involved from the start, noted that the project had been designed and built with the community in mind: “Frank’s commitment to a space education strategy has created opportunities for children and young people to get involved with astronauts, participate in space camps and participate in national space competitions.”
Frank and Debbie, who is deputy managing director of Shetland Space Center, separated two years ago.
Recently, he married Dani Morey. She survives him, with Tom and Emily, the children of her first marriage.
