Certification Expected Next Month
The FAA is expected to issue full certification next month to
Mojave Airport (CA) -- as the world's first commercial
spaceport.
"It's what happens when you energize an emerging industry. You
stimulate innovative thinking and that's what happened," said
Mojave Airport manager Stuart Witt, in an interview with Space.Com.
"I think it's going to be a wild ride the next 20 years as this
industry emerges."
Already, Mojave is home to Burt
Rutan's Scaled Composites, a leading contender for the Ansari
X-Prize. XCOR Aerospace is there, as are Orbital Science Corp. and
others. In fact, there are new space-oriented businesses popping up
all over the field and Witt is confident that, once the FAA
licenses the spaceport, more will follow.
"There are no showstoppers. We're going to get our license,"
said Witt.
But getting there has been a lesson in deciphering and
completing government paper work.
There are environmental issues. FAA/AST officials want to ensure
that spaceport tenants properly handle and dispose of propellants.
New rules have to be created to deal with the migration of
commercial space vehicles through the airspace both on the way up
and on the way down. There are NOTAMs to issue and TFRs to
post.
"The FAA is now finding that the statutes as crafted don't fit.
So now they have to be very liberal in their interpretations of the
law in order to accommodate the emerging technologies," Witt
said.
There are, according to Space.Com, also turtles. Gopherus
agassizii, to be precise. According to the California Endangered
Species Act of 1989, Gopherus (below) is almost gonus. For Witt,
that means a lot of extra work.
"Ironically, at 300 takeoffs and landings a day, nobody asked us
to ever do a tortoise check. But before I can clear a spaceship to
land, I have to do a tortoise check of the primary runway," said
Witt.
Witt himself has a bit of a fan club growing in the Mojave
Desert. "Under Witt's leadership, Mojave has become an amazing
incubator for entrepreneurial space companies such as Scaled
Composites, XCOR and Interorbital," Ansari X-Prize Chairman Peter
Diamandis told SPACE.com. "I'm excited that this historic venue
should become one of the first truly commercial spaceports."
The Ansari X-Prize organization, however, won't be awarded at
Mojave. Instead, Diamandis says his group has chosen Los Cruses
(NM). The X-Prize guru says he hopes both Mojave and Los Cruses
develop into incubators for private space fir In his vision, he
sees the Boeings and Airbuses of tomorrow starting out at either of
those two locations.