Chief Financial Officer Chuck McBride says the project is already well underway. "We are working on the environmental assessment at the Nevada test site," McBride said. "That is the first step. It is nearing completion."
After the EA is done, federal law mandates a period of public comment, often about 60 days. Then, Kistler will have to apply for a launch license for the site, and the FAA will have no more than 180 days to return with an answer.
If it becomes operational, Kistler's Nevada site will be the first orbital launch site in the United States that is not on the coast, said Chuck Kline, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
"We are well aware of their plans, we've been working with them for several years," Kline said.
"We have not, heretofore, licensed any launches that were over populated areas," Kline said. "And we have several new entrants in the area, including Kistler, that would potentially fly over populated areas. We want them to demonstrate that the public would not be endangered in event of a launch abort."
The FAA has only approved three sites for launches of fully orbital craft in the country: Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia, and Cape Canaveral in Florida. All of them are close to an ocean and a relatively safe splashdown in event of a problem with the launch.
Kline says the evidence the FAA needs will probably be available after Kistler conducts its test flights in the Australian outback.
McBride said the company has an excellent relationship with the FAA. "We don't just talk to them once and awhile," he said. "It's a running dialog; it takes a long period of time to get everyone comfortable with everything."
Kistler also has friends in Congress. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., helped originally open the Nevada nuclear test site to commercial interests back in 1992 when President Clinton announced a moratorium on nuclear testing, according to spokesman David Cherry. He also helped designate it a spaceport in 1998. Reid is also one of only six co-sponsors to Sen. John Breaux's, D-La., Commercial Space Act of 1999, currently still awaiting action in a Senate subcommittee.
"We've been pretty active" working with Kistler, Cherry said. "The intent has always been to see what kind of diversification they can bring to the launch site. Kistler was just a natural fit."
"Nevada has offered us a great opportunity. They've got good people. They've got a great site. They've got a good technical base," McBride said.
Although the area was once home to repeated nuclear explosions, both Cherry and McBride said there is no danger of a health risk.
"It's pretty big," Cherry said. "You could fit some states of the union in there."
The site was also used to test Europe's first versions of potential commercial satellite launchers, named Europa, in the 1960's. The rocket project, which was eventually abandoned, led directly to the establishment of the Ariane launch vehicle. One of the stages of a Europa design was called Ariane, and can be traced to the commercial space booster's heritage today.
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