What’s a spaceport for?

For the last several months legislators in Wisconsin have been working on a bill that would create a Wisconsin Aerospace Authority, charged with the responsibility of overseeing a state spaceport, most likely in Sheboygan. (See earlier coverage.) That bill has passed both houses of the legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature, according to an article in Sunday’s Sheboygan Press. There’s just one problem: officials in the city of Sheboygan, like Gary Dulmes of the Sheboygan Development Corp., have a very different idea of Spaceport Sheboygan, one that is simply a “science and education center” in an old armory building.

“Is there going to be commercial space travel? Yes. Will it be here? Who knows – but that was not the purpose of the aerospace authority bill,” Dulmes said. “There’s other firms that are out there trying to do it, seeing it as a huge moneymaker, but it certainly isn’t on our radar.”

State Sen. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan, who proposed the WAA bill, said the nine-member WAA would oversea potential future use as a launch site, but Dulmes said nothing larger than the 10- to 12-foot rockets used annually by Rockets for Schools is in the SDC business plan.

A companion article in the Press points out that it is possible for a suborbital spaceport to develop in Sheboygan, or elsewhere in Wisconsin, but it won’t happen soon. Both Leibham and George French, president of Rocketplane (and the founder of Sheboygan’s Rockets for Schools program a decade ago), said that the authority is a necessary first step. But as Sheboygan mayor Juan Perez put it, launching rockets from a Sheboygan spaceport “sounds a little bit far-fetched.”