Businesses flood Mojave Airport

Valley Press ^ | Friday, July 7, 2006 | ALLISON GATLIN

[BenLurkin]

MOJAVE - In four years, Mojave Airport has gone from an under-utilized airport and civilian flight test facility to a spaceport with a worldwide reputation as a "Silicon Valley" for the emerging commercial space industry. New companies are arriving and established tenants are seeing their contracts and payrolls grow.

Companies such as Scaled Composites - which won international acclaim for SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded, manned space program - and XCOR Aerospace are among the cutting-edge aerospace firms outgrowing their existing facilities as they add employees and projects.

All the airport's available facilities are occupied, and desires have been expressed to build more to accommodate those businesses that approach the airport.

"It's a stark turnaround from four years ago when we had many buildings vacant … and no obvious need out there," said Stu Witt, general manager of the Mojave Airport. "We need more buildings to serve clients walking through the door. That's a good problem to have."

Companies developing suborbital and orbital space delivery systems - including the nascent space tourism industry - "see a potential that Mojave could be a Silicon Valley, an incubator for that emerging industry," Witt said.

Such firms seek out the Mojave Airport for its favorable research and development conditions, as well as the pool of talent available in the traditionally aerospace-oriented area.

Long-established aviation companies, such as BAE Systems Flight Systems, Flight Test Associates and the National Test Pilot School, coincide nicely with the newer space firms, a balance the airport's governing board - the East Kern Airport District - works very hard to maintain.

"That's not by accident. It's carefully orchestrated and planned," said Director Marie Walker, who also owns a composite fabrication business on the airport.

[MedPig]

With "Mojave Spaceport" only a few years away, certain businesses would be stupid NOT to get onboard...

[Young Werther]

Aug 2004 I gave a speech about the X-Prize competition to the Garland, Texas Exchange Club. I suggested that DFW area entrepreneurs should consider licensing the Rutan technology and offering flights to space.

This was a month before Branson's announcement. Gov Richardson attracted Virgin Galactic to New Mexico and with 40,000 reservations the economic boom to New Mexico is unbelievable. At $200K per person that's $8 Billion Revenue Stream!!! Assume that Virgin Galactic will make 20% before taxes leaves a $6.4 Billion cashflow into the New Mexico economy.

Last Thanksgiving our NSS helped to commemorate the reopening of the Planetarium at The Dallas Science Place. I met the Virgin Galactic VP Ops and asked if he might consider flying some of his commercial missions out of Alliance Airport in Ft Worth. He said that they selected New Mexico because there was plenty of space and not many commerical routes. I said, "Texas! Not enough Space?" Oh well, guess we didn't try hard enough.

[BenLurkin]

New Mexico does seem to be doing well in the private enterprise race for space.

We're still rooting for Rutan here -- wherever his designs end up launching from.

Best of luck to you in Texas -- don't give up!

[Young Werther]

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder, will be launching his rockets from his ranch which is near El Paso. He will be building his rocket and SpacePlane in California and Seattle. I'd like to entice him to come to the DFW mertoplex, Austin and or San Antonio which have high tech aviation and space industries which could support his efforts.