Melbourne, Fla. - Boasting a new name and a united front, NASA and the United States Air Force are working to meld their Florida spaceports in order to save money and help retain the lead in the burgeoning commercial launch industry.
"It's not just nice to do. It's essential," Brig. General Donald Pettit, commander of the 45th Space Wing at Cape Canaveral Air Station, said Tuesday at the opening day of the Florida Space Launch Symposium in Melbourne, Florida.
Seated next to Pettit on the podium was Roy Bridges, the director of NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which lies just to the north of the Air Force base. Although the two spaceports have been neighbors for decades, a more binding relationship is in the works. The new venture is called Cape Canaveral Spaceport and its goal is to give range users a one-stop shop for all amenities and resources needed to launch a payload into space.
Helping to forge the partnership is the Spaceport Florida Authority, a state agency that incubates and helps finance commercial space ventures and space education initiatives.
"If you don't have a unified partnership, you will never achieve the efficiencies that are needed to remain competitive," said Al Thomas, the authority's deputy director.
The groundwork for Cape Canaveral Spaceport has already been laid, with NASA and the Air Force marking the first year of a joint-base operations contract that pulled 18 individual service contracts into one pact covering security, emergency and other services for both agencies.
KSC and Cape Canaveral Air Station now are working on plans for a business office that would give range users a single point of contact. The agencies also plan to develop standardized processes, procedures and policies.
The partnership being forged in Florida is being closely monitored, influenced and assisted by policymakers and staff in Washington, D.C. A high-level review of the nation's spaceports is nearing completion and will include recommendations to the president on any changes in policy, law or budgets that may be needed to help assure that U.S. military, civilian and private companies have unimpeded access to space.
"I think we're getting to critical mass. It's important to move ahead while we have this much attention," said Boeing's Rich Murphy, who oversees Delta rocket operations at the Cape.
For example, Pettit said the 45th Space Wing has revised its mission statement to include support for commercial users.
"What hasn't changed," said Pettit, "is the policy for me to go out and budget for it."
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