Virginia State Senator William C. Wampler, Jr. (R-Bristol) has offered a state budget amendment to dedicate prospective sales and or corporate income tax revenues that may result from the sale of human spaceflights or commercial spaceflight training in the state to the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA) for operations and educational space flight simulation activities --- exact language of the 2010 amendment.Space Adventures, Ltd., a Virginia-based entity, contracts spaceflight participate rides on Russian Soyuz boosters from time-to-time and a significant menu of other spaceflight training activities. Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation has been selected by NASA as one of several commercial launch operators that could in the future provide thrust capacity to loft a human-rated capsule from Wallops Island, Va.
If enacted, any revenue stream from the provision would be used to stimulate STEM education with ZeroG Corporation flights and to supplement the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport commercial launch operations in the future. Four public school teachers from Wampler's senatorial district flew on a ZeroG flight last year at Dulles, Va.
Wampler, a senior member of the Virginia Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Joint Senate-House Conference Committee, was the patron of the successful Virginia ZeroGravity-ZeroTax Act in 2008. The FAA-AST cited the ZeroGravity-ZeroTax law as one element of the favorable decision to locate the upcoming Taurus-II to ISS cargo launches in Virginia beginning in 2011 under provisions of a $1.9 billion federal NASA commercial launch contract.
No comments:
Post a Comment