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Your daily state space policy update

Who knew that state space policies would become such a hot topic? Monday’s Los Angeles Times takes a look at Florida’s new plan to increase support of its space industry (as discussed here last week). The article primarily focuses on Florida’s efforts, and only late in the article does it bring up California’s activities—in part because there is very little going on at the state level there. “We have the governors of Colorado, Florida and New Mexico blowing into California and meeting with executives of medium-sized space-related businesses and doing everything they can to get them to move,” said Eric Daniels of the California Space Authority. “That’s the kind of focus we don’t have in California.”

The Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News suggests that efforts to get state funding for a spaceport in New Mexico have hit a roadblock: a bid to get a vote on a non-binding “intent of the Senate” resolution in favor of the spaceport failed last week because of opposition from two Republican state senators, who said it was premature to vote on such a measure at the time. The Sun-News suggests that this development “was a sign that Richardson won’t have an easy time selling the spaceport.” However, one person who was at there last week said privately that the article overplayed the level of opposition, and that there appeared to be support for the measure from a majority of state senators.

And finally, the latest on Spaceport Sheboygan in Wisconsin. A columnist in Friday’s issue of The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, rips into the idea of converting a vacant lot in near Lake Michigan in downtown Sheboygan into a spaceport. “The genesis of Battlestar Sheboygan apparently was that somebody noticed a large vacant lot in downtown Sheboygan near Lake Michigan. A wide open area right next to a large body of water! If that doesn’t immediately make you think of Cape Canaveral, what does?” asks Joel McNally. Not that he’s too keen on spaceflight in general: “Children don’t even watch rocket launches on television any more. Their video games are a lot more exciting.”

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