The final version of the “Landsverordening ruimtevaart” (“Space Ordinance Curacao”) together with the “Memorie van Toelichting” (Explanatory Notes) has been presented on 23 April 2013 to the Minister of Traffic, Transportation and Urban Planning of Curacao,Mr Earl Balborda.
The “Space Experience Corporation” (SXC) plans to perform as from 2014 suborbital commercial spaceflights from Curacao Hato Airport in the Caribbean with a two-seater Lynx mark 2 commercial reusable launch vehicle, using its own four (reusable) rocket engines. The vehicle is currently under construction by XCOR Aerospace, housed on the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, California.
The Lynx mark 2 vehicle will take off from Curacao airport as an aircraft, but soon aftertakeoff (or “launch”) climb, with a speed of 3.500kilometers per hour, to an altitude reaching 103 kilometers (338.000 foot), the 100 kilometerwidely seen as the defined boundary of air andspace and thus making the “space flight participant” on board be an astronaut. The Lynxreturns to the takeoff runway at Curacao Airportand lands horizontally.
Together with a team of specialists Aviation Independent Consulting worked during eight months intensively on this unique project of creating specific basic regulations to enable such commercial space flights to depart from and return to an international airport (Curacao Hato)which is so far unseen in the world of air- and space law.
The draft “Landsverordening ruimtevaart” still has to pass the Parliament (“Staten”) of Curacao in the upcoming months. This basic legislation will be further worked out and detailed in the coming months in Curacao Orders in Council / Governmental Decrees, specifying technical details.