bought a former RAF radar station on Unst<\/a> about 17 years ago and considered turning it into an eco-tourism attraction.<\/p>\nBut the plan changed when the UK government was looking for potential sites for vertical launches of small rockets carrying satellites.<\/p>\n
Last month Mr Strang announced that he was taking a “step back” from the project after being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the oesophagus. <\/p>\n
Mr Strang had earlier told how he had been given a life expectancy of six months to two years.<\/p>\n
The former RAF officer, who lived in Grantown-on-Spey in the Highlands, said last month: “I feel a bit like I’ve been hit by a steam train.”<\/p>\n
But he added: “We’ve all seen stories of people who have been diagnosed with a few months and five or six years later they are still going.<\/p>\n
“The bottom line is we don’t know what the end result will be.”<\/p>\n
Mr Strang had said his “incredible team” would continue his legacy.<\/p>\n
SaxaVord UK Space Port – the first fully licensed vertical launch site in Europe – led tributes to it’s “pioneering” chief executive.<\/p>\n
Co-founder Scott Hammond said Mr Strang’s death was an “enormous blow both personally and professionally”.<\/p>\n
He added: “When we first identified the prospects for a spaceport in Unst, Frank would not take no for an answer and broke through barriers that would have deterred lesser people.<\/p>\n
“He was a real force of nature, and his vision and his grit got us to where we are today, bringing the Unst and Shetland communities, investors and government with us.”<\/p>\n
Mr Hammond said the company’s mission was not complete.<\/p>\n
He added: “My job now is to deliver not only the first launch but successive launches that establish the UK as Europe’s leader in access to space.<\/p>\n
“Both myself and the SaxaVord team feel a strong sense of responsibility to deliver that goal for Frank, and we will, I am in no doubt.<\/p>\n
“We are determined to make the UK Europe’s leader in vertical launch spaceflight. That will be Frank’s legacy, for Shetland, for Scotland and the UK.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a Scottish company became the first UK-based rocket firm to receive a space launch licence.<\/p>\n
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) licence allows Skyrora to launch from SaxaVord.<\/p>\n
If a future launch is successful, the company could become the first British company to manufacture and launch a rocket into space from the UK.<\/p>\n
The Edinburgh-based company and the CAA described it as a “huge milestone”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frank Strang, the driving force behind Shetland’s space port, has died at the age of 67. Mr Strang…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-66643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}