A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from a spaceport ( cosmodrome ), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches, and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft.

Sierra County voters approved the creation of a spaceport tax district in April 2008, freeing up funding for its construction.

A spaceport or cosmodrome ( Russian: космодром ) is a site for launching ( or receiving ) spacecraft, by analogy with seaport for ships or airport for aircraft.

The word spaceport, and even more so cosmodrome, has traditionally been used for sites capable of launching spacecraft into orbit around Earth or on interplanetary trajectories.

A spaceport may also include runways for takeoff and landing of aircraft to support spaceport operations, or to enable support of HTHL or HTVL winged launch vehicles.

The world ’ s first spaceport for orbital and human launches, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan, started as a Soviet military rocket range in 1955.

Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport as it fulfills the two major geographical requirements of such a site: it is quite close to the equator, so that the spinning earth can impart some extra velocity to the rockets for free when launched eastward, and it has uninhabited territory ( in this case, open sea ) to the east, so that lower stages of rockets and debris from launch failures cannot fall on human habitations.

Under the terms of the Russo-European joint venture, ESA will augment its own launch vehicle fleet with Soyuz rockets — using them to launch ESA or commercial payloads — and the Russians will get access to the Kourou spaceport for launching their own payloads with Soyuz rockets.

The New Mexico Spaceport Authority has declared the museum the repository for materials dealing with Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport being constructed near Upham, New Mexico.

The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers.

The spaceport is famous as the base of operations for Scaled Composites, the company that designed SpaceShipOne and won the X-Prize.

One of the proposed locations for the new commercial-mission-only spaceport is south Texas, which was revealed in April 2012, via preliminary regulatory documentation.

In October 2011, the Colorado governor formally requested that the Federal government designate Colorado a " spaceport state " and that Front Range Airport be designated a spaceport for suborbital horizontal takeoff ( HTVL and HTHL ) flights.

San Diego took over the Beavers / Dukes, and Los Angeles took Las Vegas, renaming the team the Las Vegas 51s for the famed alleged UFO spaceport, Area 51, near Las Vegas, Nevada.

Developed in the 1960s through a partnership between the University of Rome La Sapienza's Aerospace Research Centre and NASA, the BSC served as a spaceport for the launch of both Italian and international satellites.

The spaceport has been used as a launch site for the Hypersonic Rocket Launch Vehicle Project ( HRLV ) and Ghauri ballistic missiles under development by the Khan Research Laboratories.

The Soviet Union's spaceport known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome is located in Kazakhstan at Tyuratam, with the secret town of Baikonur constructed around it to accommodate the workers of the Cosmodrome.

Hatch is 40 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Interstate 25, and 34 miles south of Spaceport America, a new purpose-built spaceport being built by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority ( NMSA ) with State and county funding.

Spaceport America, east, is " the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport ", to be the headquarters of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.

It is near the Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark which is a licensed spaceport.

The Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, is the major European spaceport, with satellite launches that benefit from the location 4 degrees north of the equator.

Typically a spaceport site is large enough that, should a vehicle explode, it will not endanger human lives or adjacent launch pads.

Otherwise the sorting order is spaceport by spaceport according to the time of the first human launch.

Plesetsk Cosmodrome () is a Russian spaceport, located in Arkhangelsk Oblast, about 800 km north of Moscow and approximately 200 km south of Arkhangelsk.

The Guiana Space Centre or, more commonly, Centre Spatial Guyanais ( CSG ) is a French and European spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana.

This is the spaceport used by the ESA to send supplies to the International Space Station using the Automated Transfer Vehicle.

The headquarters of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Tanegashima Space Center spaceport is located at the southeastern end of the island.

Its main spaceport, Port Brasta, has a massive duty-free shopping mall, the motto of which is, " be like the twenty-second elephant with heated value in space -- bark!

Although there is no statue of Arthur on Frogstar B, the bird people came about the same way ; there is no archeologist called Lintilla in the part of the books that concerns itself with Frogstar B ; however, the spaceport with the massively delayed spaceship is there.

Eadrax is home to the Complaints Division spaceport, and originally home to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division motto, " SHARE AND ENJOY ", which stood in 3-mile-high letters above the main office block, before it fell through said office block and into the ground.

A similar system is used to launch Ariane 5 rockets at ELA-3 at Guiana Space Centre, a French spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana.

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center ( JSLC ) is a People's Republic of China space vehicle launch facility ( spaceport ).

The Xichang Satellite Launch Center ( XSLC ) also known as Base 27 ( 27基地 ), is a People ’ s Republic of China space vehicle launch facility ( spaceport ) approximately 64 km northwest of Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan.

a new purpose-built spaceport being built by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority with State and county funding.

Suddenly, Belser rises again and launches a surprise attack on a spaceport on Darius, which was being used to help ferry the remaining Darians to Vadis.

On October 2, 1991 he launched with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov as flight commander, and the Austrian research cosmonaut Franz Viehböck in Soyuz TM-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport, and spent over eight days in space.

In December, 2006 PlanetSpace entered negotiations with the Ohio government to build a spaceport at Rickenbacker.

Early Italian satellites were launched using vehicles provided by NASA, first from Wallops Flight Facility in 1964 and then from a spaceport in Kenya ( San Marco Platform ) between 1967 and 1988 ; Italy is now participating in the development of the Vega rocket with the ESA.

At the beginning of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, after a scuffle with a Titans officer Jerid Messa ( who insulted Kamille's name as " girlish ") at Green Noa 1's spaceport, Kamille was detained at the Titans ' base on Gryps.

It is about to reach its final phase with a first launch of the new KSLV-1 launch vehicle with a small satellite from the new Naro Space Centre in South Jeolla Province, with completion of the spaceport and launch of a South Korean satellite into sun-synchronous orbit by 2015.

The X-Wings lightspeed away to avoid the Death Star's explosion, and a final lightspeed jump sends the StarSpeeder back to the spaceport, but not before a near collision with a fuel truck in the hangar.

The spaceport is usually used to launch vehicles into lower and medium orbits with large orbital inclination angles, as well as testing medium to long-range missiles.

The Kodiak spaceport has two launch pads with a mission control center that includes 64 workstations with high-speed communications and data links.