Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for States
June 19, 2008 at 9:05 am · Filed under Campaign '08, States
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign sputtered out earlier this year, but the campaign found at least one alternative use for the money it raised. The Las Cruces Sun-News reported Thursday that the campaign donated $10,000 to efforts to get a spaceport sales tax approved in Sierra County, New Mexico, in April. That donation was the single largest contribution to “People for Aerospace”, the group that spearheaded the pro-spaceport tax effort; the group raised about $105,000 overall. “He was a supporter,” Gary Whitehead, chairman of People for Aerospace, told the Sun-News. “It’s been kind of his project and he certainly wanted it to be successful and he was willing to invest in the success of the election.” Voters in Sierra County approved the tax by a two-to-one margin in April.
June 10, 2008 at 7:07 am · Filed under Congress, States
Outside of New Mexico, which is putting nearly $200 million of state and local money into a new commercial spaceport, no two states have been more active in space policy and related economic incentives than Florida and Virginia. For the last few months, the two states have also been competing against each other to win the launch business of Orbital Sciences Corporation, which was considering both Cape Canaveral and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island as the launch site for the Taurus 2, its planned medium-lift launch vehicle the company is developing as part of its COTS cargo system.
Yesterday, Orbital made its decision, picking MARS over the Cape, much to the glee of politicians in both Virginia and Maryland. The announcement merited a press release from the office of Virginia governor Tim Kaine (a person, incidentally, touted as a potential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama), with quotes from a number of local officials in both Accomack County, where MARS is located, as well as Loudoun County, where Orbital is headquartered.
The announcement also triggered an enthusiastic press release from Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), a supporter of government and commercial activity at Wallops (in part because many of the people who work there actually live across the border in Maryland.) How enthusiastic? “This is the biggest thing to hit the Eastern Shore since Captain John Smith’s anchor!”
The announcement triggered some soul-searching from Cape supporters, like Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL). Feeney thanked state officials, including Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, for putting together an incentive package to try and lure Orbital to the Cape. “Today’s disappointing announcement highlights Florida’s need to redouble our efforts to attract space business to Cape Canaveral.”
May 16, 2008 at 6:10 am · Filed under States
Now that two counties in souther New Mexico have passed a sales tax increase to help fund development of a commercial spaceport, attention now turns to the third and final county in the region, Otero, which includes the city of Alamogordo. So how you convince citizens to vote for a tax increase, even a relatively small one, during an economic slowdown, if not outright recession?
Apparently, it’s all about the children. The Alamogordo Daily News reports on a presentation about Spaceport America and the proposed tax increase given yesterday by Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. With few high-tech job opportunities in the state, many young people leave the state looking for such work elsewhere, a trend Landeene and other supporters hope to reverse in part with the spaceport. He recounted his first meeting with governor Bill Richardson, who told Landeene that the state’s greatest export is “our kids”. “He was making a real profound statement and making sure that I got it,” Landeene said.
There’s some skepticism in the area about the economic benefits the county will realize from the spaceport, since it’s on the other side of a mountain range from the spaceport site. Also, the financial contribution that the Otero tax would provide is small: about $6.6 million of the nearly $200 million planned for the facility. Landeene warned that without that money, there could be “significant ramifications on infrastructure” at the spaceport. He added that without Otero participation in the spaceport tax, the county might not reap the benefits even if the spaceport gets built. “Yeah, Otero can hide on the sidelines, but then does anything happen over here? Maybe not.”
May 3, 2008 at 10:07 am · Filed under Other, States
This Memorial Day weekend, most people with an interest in space will be focusing their attention on the landing of NASA’s Mars Phoenix spacecraft on the Red Planet. (Many more people, of course, will be thinking about barbecues, ballgames, and the unofficial beginning of summer.) That weekend, though, is also the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, where Libertarian Party (LP) members will meet to nominate a presidential candidate (former Congressman Bob Barr is the likely nominee) and work on the party platform. Some attendees will also get a dose of space conspiracy theories.
The brochure for the convention featured a talk titled “Inside NASA” by a Dr. David Hoagland. It turns out that’s an error, according to the convention web site: it’s “Do We Still NEED NASA?” by Richard Hoagland. Yes, that Richard Hoagland. The title of the talk would seem to fit into an LP convention, where many people might be skeptical of the need for federal funding for a national space agency. The description of the talk starts off like a good fit:
Mr. Hoagland will address the urgency to redefine and refocus NASA on the critical 21st Century scientific, technological and economic problems facing the United States during the next presidential administration.
So far, so good.
He will also reveal –with official NASA imagery — startling scientific discoveries NASA, by law, has deliberately withheld from the American people for more than 40 years!
Okay, not so good.
In a column in today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Billy Cox notes that Hoagland’s presence stands in contrast to efforts by Libertarians to tone down UFO talk within their ranks. Joe Buchman, running for Congress in Utah as a Libertarian, told Cox that state LP officials are “fuming” over Buchman’s push to declassify records that he believes would prove evidence of… well, something to do with alien life. “At least I won’t be the biggest nut case at the convention now,” Buchman said upon learning of Hoagland’s talk.
If there’s one saving grace, it’s that Hoagland’s talk (admission to which requires either a certain level of convention registration or the purchase of a separate ticket) conflicts with a planned outing to a Colorado Rockies game: one case of where having a ballgame win out over space might be a good thing.
April 22, 2008 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Other, States
The Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News reports that voters in Sierra County, New Mexico approved a spaceport sales tax by roughly a two-to-one margin, much larger than the margin of victory last year in neighboring Doña Ana County. The quarter-cent increase will provide a modest amount of funding for New Mexico’s Spaceport America but also allow the formation of a “tax district” with Doña Ana County so that the tax revenue can actually be spent.
April 22, 2008 at 7:14 am · Filed under States
While most people will be focusing their attention today on the Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania, the space industry, in particular the entrepreneurial NewSpace sector, will instead be paying attention a special election today in Sierra County, New Mexico. At stake: a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax in the county, with the proceeds going towards the development of Spaceport America, the commercial spaceport planned for southern New Mexico that will be used by Virgin Galactic, among others.
The tax itself will contribute only a tiny fraction of the project’s $198-million cost: about $2.3 million. Yet the election is considered key to the spaceport’s development. A similar tax was narrowly approved a year ago in neighboring, more populous Doña Ana County, which includes the city of Las Cruces. However, because of a provision of state law, the money that the tax would have collected there could not be spent until a spaceport “tax district” is created, and that can’t be done until another county or locality approves the tax. That puts pressure on Sierra County to approve the tax, or else the spaceport will face a funding shortfall of over $50 million. (Officials in a third county, Otero, have stated that they plan their own tax referendum later this year—but only if the tax passes in Sierra County.) “At this point there is not a back-up plan” if the tax fails in Sierra, Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told the Las Cruces Sun News.
It’s not surprising, then, that spaceport advocates have been putting on a full-court press in the last couple of weeks. Spaceport officials have announced a number of agreements with potential spaceport users, from sounding rocket developer UP Aerospace to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. New Mexico’s lieutenant governor, Diane Denish, also stumped for the tax in the county last week. The biggest incentive, though, might come from Virgin Galactic, which is offering to take one local resident to space for free each year once they begin operations at the spaceport.
Far and away the largest city in Sierra County is Truth or Consequences. For spaceport advocates, that’s a pretty apt description of what this election represents for them.
April 7, 2008 at 12:02 pm · Filed under States
[Catching up on some older material while stuck at the airport]
Last week a committee of the Florida Senate unanimously approved four bills designed to provide various incentives for the space industry in the state. SB 2526 supports the development of an initiative to diversify the state’s space industry. SB 2458 would create a “Space and Aerospace Development Infrastructure Enhancement Fund”. SB 2666 would include “space flight contractors” into an existing tax refund program for defense contractors.
The fourth bill, SB 2426, is described in the Florida Today article above as providing $15 million to “refurbish a launch complex at Kennedy Space Center”. The text of the legislation is more vague, though: it makes available $15 million “to respond to extraordinary economic opportunities in the space and aerospace business sectors, to address the need for space and aerospace business facilities and infrastructure, and to compete for key space and aerospace businesses interested in entering into partnerships with the state.” The bill provides a mechanism for Space Florida to submit such projects for consideration, but doesn’t specify any one particular project.
That is interesting, because for the last couple of months KSC has been pushing a proposal to develop a new commercial launch facility on property it has. One proposed location is on KSC land that is also part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. That met with sharp opposition from environmentalists and others, including fishermen who were concerned that their access to a local beach would be restricted, particularly during launch operations. An Orlando Sentinel editorial last month was sharply critical of the proposed launch complex, arguing that NASA should instead work with the Air Force to gain access to abandoned launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (ignoring an alternative site proposal on KSC property but in not nearly as sensitive a location.) Of course, that editorial was published before the news that thousands of KSC jobs would be lost when the shuttle is retired; one wonders if that assessment changed a few minds about the proposed KSC launch complex.
March 6, 2008 at 5:36 am · Filed under States
A couple of pieces of state legislation related to commercial space have passed milestones in the last several days:
In Hawaii, the House approved unanimously Tuesday HB2259, legislation that support work to develop a commercial spaceport in the state. Specifically, the legislation appropriates an unspecified sum to the state’s Office of Aerospace Development “to conduct feasibility studies for a spaceport and to pay for consultation and other expenses incurred in applying to the Federal Aviation Administration for a commercial space transportation license.”
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Governor Tim Kaine signed into law this week SB286, a “zero-g, zero-tax” bill for commercial spaceflight operations in the state. The bill amends the state tax code so that, starting in 2009, no tax would be charged on revenue from commercial human spaceflight launch services and training, or NATS COTS resupply services, provided those launches take place from a facility in the state. The fiscal impact statement for the legislation notes that the impact of the tax exemption “is unknown, but likely minimal”, because of the lack of activity in this sector.
The summary also notes that “In addition, only two companies, neither of which appears to have nexus with Virginia, have signed contracts with the COTS division of NASA,” when in fact one company with a funded COTS award, Orbital Sciences Corporation, is based in Virginia and is considering launches from Wallops. (The summary is stated February 26, about a week after Orbital’s COTS award was announced.) Orbital’s use of Wallops is not a done deal yet, but company CEO David W. Thompson said yesterday at the Goddard Memorial Symposium that they would make a final decision in the coming months.
February 28, 2008 at 6:44 am · Filed under Other, States
The Florida Legislature, following the lead of Virginia, is considering legislation to provide liability immunity for suborbital commercial vehicle operators. The legislation, HB 737, was introduced in the Florida House of Representatives in January by Rep. David Simmons, an Orlando-area Republican, and is currently working its way through various House committees. The legislation would make any “spaceflight entity” (any company or organization with an FAA launch, reentry, or spaceport license) “not liable for injury to or death of a participant resulting from the inherent risks of spaceflight launch activities”, except in those cases of gross negligence or intentional harm. The legislation would also require spaceflight participants to sign a statement that contains the following:
“WARNING: Under Florida law, there is no liability for an injury to or death of a participant in a spaceflight activity provided by a spaceflight entity if such injury or death results from the inherent risks of the spaceflight activity. Inherent risks of spaceflight activities include, among others, risks of injury to land, equipment, persons, and animals, as well as the potential for you to act in a negligent manner that may contribute to your injury or death. You are assuming the risk of participating in this spaceflight activity.”
The legislation, which is patterned after a similar bill that was signed into law in Virginia last year, attracted the attention of the Palm Beach Post, which published an editorial about the bill on Thursday. Or, rather, it mentions the bill in passing, trying to draw it into the discussion of the USA 193 intercept, and doing so poorly:
If Virginia isn’t going to hold such companies responsible for dropping a satellite on a condominium, the only way Florida can compete for that emerging industry is to give Buck Rogers entrepreneurs a pass if they happen to knock off a few Floridians. Hey, whose fault is it if gravity acting on spacecraft kills a hapless golfer or two?
If Jac Wilder VerSteeg, the deputy editor of the Post’s editorial page and the author of the editorial, had actually read the legislation, he would see it would have nothing to do with “dropping a satellite on a condominium”. But it would have then made the editorial that much less entertaining.
December 13, 2007 at 7:33 am · Filed under States
[Cross-posted from Personal Spaceflight for your reading convenience.]
The attorney general of New Mexico has concluded that a local tax increase passed this spring to help fund development of Spaceport America should not be collected starting January 1 as originally planned because of a lack of a mechanism to spend the revenues. Voters in Doña Ana County, which includes the city of Las Cruces, passed the quarter-cent gross receipts tax increase in April; at the time the tax was set to take effect on January 1. However, county officials had asked that the introduction of the tax be delayed because the money can’t be spent until a spaceport tax district is created, and that district can’t form until at least one other county also approves a similar tax. Two other counties in southern New Mexico, Otero and Sierra, also plan to hold tax referenda, but not until spring 2008 at the earliest.
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