The Daytona Beach News-Journal and Orlando Sentinel have have thrown their editorial weight behind citizens who are opposed to building a new commercial launch facility in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge at the Kennedy Space Center.
About 200 residents spoke out against the idea during a recent public hearing. The refuge site is one of several locations being considered. Residents suggested that the new facility be built on a nearby Air Force site that already hosts abandoned launch pads.
“Considering that some 1 million visitors a year trek into the refuge — birders, boaters, fishermen, hunters and hikers by the droves — one would think officials might have measured the potential economic blow to tourism and related loss of jobs from closing parts of the refuge against the 200 jobs and economic prospects of commercial space flight. NASA hasn’t. Interior Department and state officials should,” the Dayton editors wrote.
The Orlando Sentinel editors were a bit more blunt: “What part of the word ‘refuge’ doesn’t NASA understand?”
Meanwhile, Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas credits NASA for holding public hearings and doubts agency officials will build anything in the wildlife refuge. “If anything, it seems as if they are sabotaging the idea,” he wrote.
