Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times has an article [free registration required] about an effort by a state legislator to expand an existing tax break for launch vehicles and spacecraft built in and launched from California. The bill, heard in the State Assembly’s taxation committee for the first time Monday, would extend the tax break to cover launch facilities and related ground equipment. The bill would cost the state about $1.6 million a year in taxes, according to its sponsor, Abel Maldonado, an assemblyman from Santa Maria, not far from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Maldonado is pushing for the tax break because he argues that although 43% of satellites worldwide are made in California, only 20% are launched from the state. (The article didn’t specify a year or years those statistics cover, but given that companies like Boeing, Space Systems/Loral, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman all have facilities for building commercial and/or government satellites in the state, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.) However, geography and orbital mechanics suggest that it will be difficult for the state to increase its share of the launch market. Vandenberg can’t support launches to geosynchronous orbit, which is where the bulk of commercial launches are today, and Europe, Russia, China, and other spacefaring nations are all going to use their own launch facilities for government missions. The tax break bill would cover Sea Launch, which is based in Long Beach although its launches actually take place on the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, several thousand kilometers away.
It would be interesting to know if the bill includes any provision for suborbital launch services. I did a quick check of the California Legislature’s version of Thomas and couldn’t find the bill this morning.
