Company nearing decision on Cape Breton spaceport, chairman says

The company that hopes to build acommercial spaceport in Nova Scotia has nearly completed a mockup of its rocket and is studying two potential sites in Cape Breton, chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria says.

PlanetSpace of Chicago previously announced it was talking to the Nova Scotia government about possible launch sites for its Silver Dart spacecraft, named after the first plane to fly in Canada.

Nova Scotia gave the company 120 hectares of land last year, judging the project"a credible opportunity," said Nova Scotia Business Inc.spokesman Paul Doucet.

Now the company must pick a launch site to fulfil requirements in an agreement with NASA, signed in February. Under that deal, NASA agreed to share information so the company can better understand NASA's needs for space station crew and cargo transportation launch vehicles.

While the PlanetSpace website refers to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue and plans to fly 2,000 space tourists with fares starting at $250,000 US, NASA is interested intransporting cargo and crews tolow-Earth orbital destinations.

The company is headed by Kathuria, who has a history of tech startups, and presidentGeoff Sheerin, who heads Canadian Arrow of London, Ont. That company is developing a cluster of 10 rocket enginesto boost the Silver Dart into space.

Kathuria helped build MirCorp, which privately launched the first private citizen into space in 2001 for a reported $20 million. "I just came back from paradise," Dennis Tito said after he landed.

The original Silver Dart, backed by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, lifted off from a frozen lake inBaddeck, N.S., in February 1909.