Florida Today has a roundup of what the Florida Legislature has done during its current term to attract and keep aerospace companies. These measures include:
- $14.5 million to upgrade a launch complex for commercial flights;
- $1.25 million for space workforce retention and training programs;
- tax refunds for companies that retain workers; and,
- a measure limiting the liability of space tourism companies.
Ironically, the Legislature passed a budget that severely cuts funding for Space Florida, the organization that develops and promotes the state’s aerospace industry. Space Florida will receive $4 million this year, a reduction from its current $7 million budget. Gov. Charlie Crist had requested an increase to $8.5 million.
The cutback was apparently part of a general belt tightening effort in the midst of an economic downturn. A spokeswoman said Space Florida would cut back on trade shows and other promotional activities but does not anticipate any staff cutbacks.
Florida Today also reports that Space Florida is in negotiations with the U.S. Air Force over the use of Launch Complex 36, a deactivated Atlas rocket launch facility at the Cape Canaveral Air Station. The story does not indicate how the state would use the complex, but it could be related to efforts by Florida to lure Orbital Sciences Corporation to the state. The company is expected to make a decision soon on whether it will launch its new NASA-funded rocket from Virginia or Florida.
The X Prize’s Will Pomerantz has some notes from a recent closed-door confab held in Colorado between U.S. Air Force officials and members of the entrepreneurial space community just prior to the National Space Symposium.
The half-day session, co-sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, gave military and business folks a chance to talk candidly about how to work together. The U.S. Air Force is interested in developing operational space response assets capable of deploying anywhere in the world.
The conclusions reached were fairly basic but sound: the military can’t ask companies for more than they can actually delivery, contracts must be adjusted to the realities faced by entrepreneurs, and businesses need to stay clued in on future military plans. Entrepreneurs must be aware that timing is essential when it comes to snagging government contracts to develop new technologies.
UPDATE: Pomerantz has published Part 2 of his report. The report has almost nothing to do with the RLV summit; it’s mostly about how the National Space Symposium is really cool.
In an effort to jump-start a stalled space tourism project, TGV Rockets is teaming up with Seoul-based Challenge & Space to “Americanize” the South Korean company’s rocket engine, Aviation Week reports.
AirBoss Aerospace chose the Chase 10 engine for its four-seat Proteus suborbital space vehicle in 2005. However, the project has been held up due to U.S. government concerns over foreign sourcing of the rocket technology.
“We’d like to Americanize the engine, and run it through tests with more U.S. content to eventually make it a U.S.-certified engine,” C&S research engineer David Riseborough told AvWeek.
TGV is leading the effort to obtain certification for the methane-liquid oxygen engine. The Oklahoma company is looking for contracts stateside; one possibility is the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s $70 million Fully Reusable Access to Space Technology (FAST) program, which is developing technology for aircraft-type operation.
Discovery News has an interesting report on a lesser known aspect of the Endeavour’s recent mission to the International Space Station: an experiment with inflatable structures that could make space construction easier.
As part of an Air Force-funded experiment called RIGEX, shuttle astronauts “inflated three flexible tubes housed inside a chamber in the shuttle cargo bay with pressurized nitrogen gas, then heated them. The tubes then cooled, forming rigid structures…[which] were blasted with vibrations to test their structural integrity.”
Officials are hoping the experiment will lead to easier ways of building large structures in space. Bigelow Aerospace is developing a space station using a similar technology called TransHab that was originally developed by NASA in the 1990’s.