Awating permission to launch in Virginia?

Augusta County, Va. has its own "Rocket Boys" who seek to recast the "October Sky" movie plot into 21st century redux complete with government regulatory action and courtroom drama.

But the scene is not from a small coal-mining town of 1960. Today's scene is on 500-acre rural farm where hundreds of youngsters, accompanied by parents and skilled rocket enthusiasts, gathered to learn teamwork, a host of new skills, and to dream new dreams of taking to spaceflight.

The local Rocket Boys of 2010 are not much different of those in the true-to-life book and movie. This league of rocketeers, organized as Valley Aerospace, value science, technology, engineering, mathematics outside of the classroom and in the fields of Virginia; a state that values people who dare look-up to the new frontiers of opportunity in space.

Such a daring and diligent effort had lead Virginia-based Valley Aerospace student entrants into national model rocket launch competitions and bringing student honors to Virginia while setting a positive community example for others to follow. Or, so one might have thought.

Smothered by an Augusta County Board of Zoning Appeals decision, the action has left the land owner-sanctioned and Federal Aviation Administration-approved model rocket launch pads silent since late 2009. The educational rocket launch issue is now in judicial review and awaits a go no-go launch decision by a state circuit court judge.

Unfortunately, it is the adult decision-makers whose judgment and motivation that must now be questioned to withhold such life-building concepts from their children. Perhaps some serious soul searching among the appropriate county officials to reconsider the initial short-sighted decision will bear fruit before the winter cold inhibits quality education time with cardboard and balsa wood rocket builders. Otherwise, this legal cause will not take to shelter.

The whole affair should not have taken this unbecoming trajectory. The legal case should be made moot by the better course of action; a donation of time to help the young rocketeers; not an action that denies them "one small step" to later become more educated adult citizens.

In a state expending millions to prepare real-life rocket launch pads to soon ferry supplies and cargo to the orbiting International Space Station next year and to boost a satellite to the moon in 2012, we find a narrow-minded shut down of our most highly-valued human asset, our youth, to learn the 'right stuff.' We are now in a world where China and India graduate more engineers and scientists in a single year than Americans will in the next decade, the Augusta County Board of Zoning Appeals capricious action screams for rapid resolution and a keener sense of justice.

Augusta County should allow its children "the rocket's red glare" to safely launch and return their egg payloads without days in a circuit court; that is unless Virginia needs more aspiring lawyers instead of scientists and engineers. WVTF News radio report.