Ger­ard Best

Com­mer­cial space trav­el could come to Cu­ra­cao as ear­ly as 2014.

Cu­ra­cao Air­port Hold­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Mau­rice Adri­aens an­nounced the pro­ject­ed launch date for the am­bi­tious project, dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at the Caribbean ICT Road­show, which took place at the Cu­ra­cao World Trade Cen­tre from Sep­tem­ber 9-10.

The is­land of Cu­ra­cao is tipped to host SXC's sec­ond launch­pad, the first be­ing lo­cat­ed in an Air and Space Port in the Mo­jave desert, Unit­ed States. Space­flight par­tic­i­pants will be launched from the Cu­ra­cao space­port in­to sub­or­bital space above the sur­face of the Earth and then safe­ly looped back to Earth, ac­cord­ing to an on­line pro­mo­tion­al video on the Space Ex­pe­di­tion Cor­po­ra­tion (SXC) of­fi­cial Web site.

Ad­dress­ing a mul­ti-stake­hold­er au­di­ence on the sec­ond day of the Road­show, Adri­aens' pre­sen­ta­tion high­light­ed the down­stream eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that would flow from the de­vel­op­ment of an in­dige­nous com­mer­cial hu­man space­flight in­dus­try. The prospect of tran­si­tion­ing the is­land's econ­o­my from tra­di­tion­al tourism to space tourism gen­er­at­ed great in­ter­est in the room and amongst the for­eign­ers rep­re­sent­ed at the re­gion­al gath­er­ing.

"It's a good dream, isn't it?" he asked. "So...who wants to be a Cu­ra­naut?"

Adri­aens was among a num­ber of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pre­sen­ters from a range of back­grounds demon­strat­ed the po­ten­tial of ICT to im­pact e-health, e-learn­ing, e-com­merce, cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion, and youth.

The space­flight pre­sen­ta­tion was part of the CTU's em­pha­sis on tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion as an en­gine for Caribbean de­vel­op­ment.Or­gan­ised by the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU), the Caribbean ICT Road­show is now in­to its third year, hav­ing vis­it­ed 17 coun­tries across the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to CTU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Bernadette Lewis, the pro­gramme is "de­signed to fos­ter a spir­it of in­no­va­tion in the adop­tion of ICT-based prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges".