Sometimes a Spaceport isn’t a spaceport

For months attention (and a little bit of ridicule) has focused on plans in the Wisconsin State Legislature to create a state aerospace authority charged primary with developing a state spaceport for commercial spacecraft, such as in the lakeshore town of Sheboygan. The bill has passed both houses of the state legislature and is expected to be signed into law by the governor in the next few weeks. So full speed ahead for Spaceport Sheboygan? Well, it depends on what you mean by “spaceport”, according to an article in Sunday’s Sheboygan Press. City officials, such as Gary Dulmes of the Sheboygan Development Corp., are focused on creating an educational center:

The planned science and education center is commonly referred to as Spaceport Sheboygan, but that term technically refers to an area of restricted airspace over Lake Michigan from Port Washington to Manitowoc, according to the SDC business plan. The City of Sheboygan has state permission to build a future public-use spaceport within that area.

But Sheboygan will not be Cape Canaveral, North Campus any time in the near future.

“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.”