Congress

CSMonitor on tax breaks for private spacecraft

Lost in all the media attention surrounding the Aldridge Commission’s final report was this short editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Christian Science Monitor. The editorial comes out in favor of incentives like tax breaks for commercial space ventures, something that was recommended by the commission. It was interesting, and pleasantly surprising, that the Monitor would take even just a few paragraphs to promote it in its pages.

Unfortunately, the editors of the paper could have done a better job with this editorial. The editorial noted parenthetically that “Congress will need to pass a pending bill that would allow private spaceports,” ignoring that there are several facilities in the US today with commercial spaceport licenses from the FAA. Moreover, while the article endorses the concept of tax incentives to promote commercial space activity, it fails to point out that such legislation has already been introduced in Congress, notably the Invest in Space Now Act of 2003 (HR 2358), also known as the Calvert-Ortiz bill, as well as Dana Rohrabacher’s Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act of 2003 (HR 914). Both bills, introduced over a year ago, haven’t gone very far in the House; it remains to be seen if the Aldridge Commission report, or editorials like the Monitor’s, will do much to further them.

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