"It's awfully hard to beat southern Florida and certain areas of California," said J. Jan Collmer, one of the nine appointed commissioners. "I am hoping that we are still in the running."
Space Access and Lockheed Martin are two companies considering launch sites in Texas, Moser said. Both companies are trying to build fully reusable orbital craft, which would provide a cheaper alternative to the NASA Space Shuttle.
Lockheed Martin will not choose a site until 2001, said Anthony Jacob, a company analyst involved in the VentureStar project. He said he was unable to comment on the merits of the 32 proposed sites that are located in 15 states.
Space Access has narrowed its possible sites down to two in Texas and one in Homestead, Fla., said Mike Wade, a company vice president. Wade said the program should be fully running by 2003, but he could not set an exact date for when the company will choose a site.
The three possible Texas sites are hampered by over-flight issues involving Florida and Mexico, Collmer said. A launch site for either company is the commission's top priority because it would attract other companies to Texas, he said.
"You are talking about 100 launches a year," Collmer said.
Commission Chairman Walter Cunningham, a former astronaut who flew aboard Apollo VII, said the commission's mission is to provide support for local entities who are trying to attract aerospace and aviation business.
"We locate where the fish are and then let someone else haul them in," Cunningham said.
Following a bleak period in 1994 and 1995 in which the commission received no funding, the legislature appropriated $400,000 for the 1996-1997 budget, which was renewed for 1998-1999.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush appointed Collmer, director of Dallas-based Collmer Semiconductor, Inc., to a six-year term on the commission in February of 1999. Collmer said that despite the recent difficulty in landing the launch site, the commission has been successful. But he concedes that the aerospace industry is weak in Texas. "We're not even close to number one," he said. "California is clearly number one. This is an uphill battle."
When asked to pinpoint the commission's achievements, Moser points toward the identification of viable commercial launch sites. This represents a first step toward hosting a program like VentureStar.
"We started way behind," Moser said. "We have followed our plan and accomplished what we wanted to. You just solve one problem at a time and push on." The entire effort is a marked contrast to the early space era when NASA and NASA-related contracts dominated the space industry and the Houston-based Manned Spacecraft Center was king of space spending. (The center was renamed in 1973 in honor of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.)
But today, it is commercial space that brings in the largest share of space spending, with NASA behind both industry and the Pentagon in terms of growth in annual space revenues.
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