Virginia loves space tourism; Maryland, not so much

A front-page article in today’s Washington Post discusses the impending launch of a Minotaur rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island, Virginia. That launch will carry an experimental military satellite, TacSat 2, but spaceport officials would like to expand their operations to include suborbital or even orbital space tourism:

[Spaceport director Billie Reed] said MARS would love to host a tourist mission.

“Absolutely!” he said. “If you print anything, I would really like you to print that: Hey, guys, we can do it!”

MARS, while located in Virginia, is a cooperative venture between Maryland and Virginia (the facility is located just south of the Maryland border on the Delmarva Peninsula.) A Maryland official quoted in the article, though, was more skeptical about the whole idea of space tourism:

But there are concerns about the future of space tourism. “How large is that market?” asked Aris Melissaratos, Maryland’s Secretary of Business and Economic Development and the state’s point person on the spaceport. “I really don’t want to put too many economic eggs in that basket.”

That statement is ironic since one of the leading forecasts of the size of the space tourism market was developed by a Maryland company, Futron. (My employer; standard disclaimers apply)

1 comment to Virginia loves space tourism; Maryland, not so much

  • There are a number of volunteers seeking to engage Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, US Senator-Elect Jim Webb, Virginia Secretary of Commerce & Trade Patrick Gottschalk and state legislators throughout the Commonwealth of the need to pursue human suborbital flight from the Wallops Flight Facility and/or the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. Please permit me to urge Virginians who may read this message to e-Mail “Hon. Patrick Gottschalk”
    to urge active effort suborbital flights. Virginia
    should take the lead in the partnership.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>