Florida has a lot riding on the future of manned spaceflight. The successful commercial launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Centerearlier this month lifts hopes that the Sunshine State will remain a major player in space -- even amid concerns about President Barack Obama's realignment of NASA.
Sunshine State News' Kenric Ward interviewed John Gedmark, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), about privatization of America's space effort -- and Florida's role in it.
Ward: Rate Florida's potential and capacity to compete for space business. Who are Florida's biggest rivals in this arena?
Gedmark: CSF is proud to include Space Florida (the spaceport authority and economic development organization) as a member, and Space Florida's CEO Frank DiBello is highly regarded throughout the industry as being able to attract and retain new businesses. Florida also has the instant brand recognition of 50 years of space history. With that said, states such as Virginia, New Mexico, and California have been very successful in convincing entrepreneurial space companies to set up shop in those states, both for manufacturing facilities and as launch sites. So Florida will need to work at full speed in order to ensure that it can remain competitive in the new "commercial space race."
Ward: Are other states and localities better equipped to facilitate the kind of commercialization program your group advocates? Who, why and how?
Gedmark: The industry is in flux, and many states are in a position to potentially capitalize on new industry developments.Of course, many commercial space companies such as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance already have significant facilities in Florida.
Ward: Florida recently approved incentives for the economic development along the Space Coast. Is the state doing all it can to attract, retain and grow its space-related industry? What could/should it do?
Gedmark: Probably the single most important thing that Florida could do to grow its commercial space industry would be to adopt a positive public stance toward commercial space activities. The public stance of state officials and other Florida leaders is one of the areas where industry leaders reason theywill look when deciding where to bring their private investment, new facilities, and jobs.
Ward: Florida's politicians and labor unions have criticized the Obama administration for creating a "gap" in heavy-lift launch capability, manned flight and deep-space exploration with the cancellation of the Constellation program. Is this a fair criticism? Why/why not?
Gedmark: The new plan will actually accelerate the arrival of heavy-lift compared to the old plan. According to the Augustine committee, under the old plan heavy-lift would not have arrived until the late 2020's without a huge new infusion of dollars into NASA's budget -- an increasingly unlikely event under the nation's current fiscal constraints.
Moreover, under the old plan the space station would have been deorbited into the ocean by 2015 in order to fund Ares I.There would have been literally no destination for astronauts to visit once Ares I became operational in 2017, with nothing for Orion to do but missions in low Earth orbit until heavy-lift capability arrived a decade later. The use of existing launch vehicles, including the Atlas V, Delta IV, and now the Falcon 9, provides the clearest, simplest, and fastest way to close the gap.
Ward: Please provide any projections relating to job growth and economic expansion under the private business model you advocate vs. the old-school government approach to space. I'm looking here for data models that can counter the political sound bites that assume government-directed programs are best.
Gedmark: As President Obama stated at Kennedy Space Center, "Theres potential for even more jobs as companies in Florida and across America compete to be part of a new space transportation industry. ... This holds the promise of generating more than 10,000 jobs nationwide over the next few years. And many of these jobs will be created right here in Florida because this is an area primed to lead in this competition." The detailed jobs study that the president was referring to is available here. Note that this jobs figure includes only direct jobs, and does not include indirect jobs.
NASA's budget will likely never return to Apollo levels -- so we need new sources of investment to create jobs.And these private entrepreneurs are bringing their own money to the table. Robert Bigelow, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and others have invested hundreds of millions of outside money, so that the space industry and Florida are no longer trapped in a zero-sum game for the NASA pie. A study tabulating private investment in commercial space can be found here.
Ward: We are told that every Kennedy Space Center job generates approximately three "indirect" jobs. Would that ratio be different if more space work were privatized?
Gedmark: The number of indirect jobs created from each commercial space jobis expected to be similar.Moreover, commercial space offers the potential for commercial spaceflight to attract ancillary industries nearby the launch site, such as bio-tech companies that will build payloads for microgravity research on commercial vehicles; launch site tourism to view the launches; medical and training facilities for space tourists, and so on.
By turning the international space station into a real hub of commerce, and by increasing the flight rate of astronauts from the Cape, we expect that more businesses and tourists will show up and spend their dollars in Florida. One-and-a-half million people visit the space shuttle visitors center each year, and an estimated 30,000 people traveled to Floridas Space Coast to see the recent space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Commercial space can bring back launch-site tourism to Florida faster than NASA would have under the previous plan.
Ward: Please give a brief comparison of NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the federal agency founded in 1915) and NASA today.
Gedmark: NACA conducted cutting-edge research that was critical to the rapid growth of the aviation and airline industries, which today are responsible for millions of jobs and billions of dollars of economic impact each year. Today, NASA's research programs have been cut back in order to fund programs such as Ares I, but even a small amount of additional research dollars could go a long way toward spurring the growth of a stronger industrial base, educating students and future engineers, and making NASA an engine of accelerated economic development.
However, it's important to note that while it is true that NASA is returning to the successful NACA model of cutting-edge research, it is also true that NASA will be retaining its prior mission to build the exploration vehicles to take humanity beyond low Earth orbit -- that is not being eliminated. So the NACA model is great but it's not the whole story of what NASA will do. NASA is not walking away from exploration, but rather commercial will take over low Earth orbit so NASA will focus on human exploration beyond Earth orbit as well as cutting-edge research.
