Virginia's two candidates for governor this coming November have linked the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to the state's energy development plans suggesting that Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Robert McDonnell may have a vision for space-based solar power development in the years ahead [video].Deeds, speaking to a Energy Technology Summit is southwestern Virginia in April, suggested that the Virginia spaceport become a part of a larger energy technology plan for Virginia [video] while McDonnell speaking this month to a conference of young men spoke of the essentials of coal, nuclear energy and the spaceport as keys to the state's energy potential [video].
While neither candidate for Virginia's executive mansion has directly linked the spaceport's future to space-based solar power, there is a growing nexus between the spaceport and energy that would lead to a conclusion that the two candidates have a vision that would use space-based technologies for future electric power production in Virginia [video].
Virginia hosts all the essential assets: space-based solar power knowledge (Ashburn-based John C. Mankins); one of the nation's largest power producers (Richmond-based Dominion Resources); one of the commercial space launch providers (Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corporation); one of the nation's viable commercial spaceports (Wallops Island-based Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport); and, real estate for power receivers in southwestern Virginia's coalfields of the Central Appalachian Mountains with proposed development of a electric smart grid to support a new coal-fired power plant and hundreds of wind turbines bring brought on-line within the next decade.
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