Qualla: Spaceport 1 https://qualla.com/spaceport-1 en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Spaceport 1 https://qualla.com/spaceport-1 Spaceport 1: Introduction https://qualla.com/spaceport-1/ Photo credit Conor Lawless, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two hundred and forty-four people wrote in to oppose it. A petition gathered nearly a thousand signatures. Six people wrote in support. Yet on a headland called Scolpaig, on the western edge of North Uist, the diggers arrived in November 2024. Spaceport 1 is being built, and the Outer Hebrides, a place of standing stones and corn crakes and machair, is preparing to launch rockets to orbit.

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Image: Conor Lawless | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/gf4x-spaceport-1-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Spaceport 1: The Site at Scolpaig https://qualla.com/spaceport-1/ Photo credit Conor Lawless, CC BY-SA 4.0. Scolpaig sits at the northwest tip of North Uist, where the land breaks apart into skerries and the Atlantic rolls in unbroken from Newfoundland. The site is designed as a low-impact, multi-customer sub-orbital vertical launch facility, with the capacity to carry payloads of up t...

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Image: Conor Lawless | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/gf4x-spaceport-1-the-site-at-scolpaig.mp3 0:06 2 full Spaceport 1: The Long Road to Approval https://qualla.com/spaceport-1/ Photo credit Conor Lawless, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2018, the project lost out on £2.5 million in government funding to a rival site at Sutherland, on the Scottish mainland. The Hebridean consortium pressed on regardless. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the local council, agreed in 2019 to invest £1 million in the land purchase, par...

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Image: Conor Lawless | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/gf4x-spaceport-1-the-long-road-to-approval.mp3 0:06 3 full Spaceport 1: Neighbours in the Sky https://qualla.com/spaceport-1/ Photo credit Conor Lawless, CC BY-SA 4.0. Spaceport 1 will not be alone. Just to the south, on Benbecula and South Uist, sits MOD Hebrides, the Cold War-era missile range that has been firing rockets into the Atlantic since 1958. The new spaceport is explicitly designed to build on that infrastructure and that expertise....

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Image: Conor Lawless | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/gf4x-spaceport-1-neighbours-in-the-sky.mp3 0:06 4 full Spaceport 1: What Gets Lost, What Gets Gained https://qualla.com/spaceport-1/ Photo credit Conor Lawless, CC BY-SA 4.0. The arguments cut in familiar directions. Supporters point to fifty to seventy promised jobs in an island chain that has been losing population for two centuries. Opponents point to the machair, the wildflower-strewn coastal grassland unique to the Hebrides and home to species th...

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Image: Conor Lawless | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/x/spaceport-1-wp/gf4x-spaceport-1-what-gets-lost-what-gets-gained.mp3 0:06 5 full