New Atlas By Loz Blain November 06, 2020
A serious-looking consortium of businesses is trying to position Japan as the first Asian space tourism hub, by proposing a futuristic, floating "Spaceport Japan" from which services like Virgin Galactic can operate their sub-orbital joyrides.
In terms of the flight logistics, this will initially just require a regular runway; Virgin's SpaceShipTwo Unity doesn't blast off vertically like a typical space rocket. Instead, it attaches to the remarkable WhiteKnightTwo, hanging between the mothership's twin fuselages as it takes off like a crazy-looking but relatively conventional aircraft and rises to a 50,000-ft altitude.
At this stage, SpaceShipTwo drops off and the rocket boosters kick in, accelerating the spacecraft at around 3.5 g to speeds over Mach 3.5 toward the blackness of space. At some point, higher than 50 miles, but well below orbital altitude, the rockets will shut off, and passengers will be able to get out of their seats and float about in a zero-gravity experience for a few minutes while looking out the windows at the curvature of the Earth below.
More:
https://newatlas.com/space/spaceport-japan-tokyo/
