CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The Air Force is plugging its main launch area along Florida's Space Coast into the digital age this month.
The Air Force hopes modern computers and a new communications network will reduce the Range's workforce by at least 60 positions. It also hopes to save money for itself and the companies that use the launch complexes of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center.
Air Force officials said the cost of the upgrade was more than $2 billion through 2006. But those officials won't say how much savings to expect. It should, however, make the U.S. launch business more competitive.
The work, which has shut down the Eastern Range until Sept. 21, is centered on the critical safety network that ground controllers use to blow up careening rockets before they threaten Space Coast communities.
Other systems will be replaced during several years of upgrades at the base.
"The equipment we're replacing is not the oldest, but it is the most important," program manager Lt. Col. Michael Coolidge said.
The Eastern Range hosts about 35 launches a year, but some of the computers that collect data from a rocket during launch still use vacuum tubes.
"These were considered older machines (in the 1980s)," Coolidge said of the equipment. "They are considered ancient now." With radar, antenna and other instruments stretched from Newfoundland to the Ascension Islands near Africa, the 45th Space Wing based at Patrick Air Force Base controls the 15 million square miles of the Atlantic Ocean during a launch.
Previously connected to those locations by inefficient telephone cables, the Air Force is setting up the range to rely on satellites instead.
Think of it as moving from messages in a bottle to the Internet.
Aerospace companies have lobbied for years for the modernization, arguing that they can compete better with foreign launch companies if the Air Force improves its equipment.
"It will do a lot to lower the launch costs," said Bruce Mahone, spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Association.
Ed Gormel, executive director of Spaceport Florida Authority, said the work is overdue.
"The Air Force is constantly struggling with its real world responsibilities and running this place," Gormel said, noting that the modernization was often one of the first things put off when budgets tightened.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
advertisement
