Virginia Commercial Space Launch Operations Budget and Policy Adopted

The 2010 Virginia General Assembly wrapped-up late Sunday with positive results for the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport as it prepares extensive mulit-year launch campaigns to rocket cargo to the orbiting International Space Station next spring. The follow-on launches will be at the rate of every six-months for the next five years. A NASA lunar probe to orbit the Moon will pierce the Virginia skies in 2012 from the spaceport - now only one of four federally licensed orbital launch pads in the nation.

Yet the intensive negotiations among state budget weary legislators culminated with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA) having won a major victory for operations for the spaceport over the next two-years. Enjoying vocal support of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and the House of Delegates, the assembly included $838,000 in the state budget for each of the next two years to assist the VCSFA FBO with the rapidly growing spaceport.

State Del. Terry G. Kilgore (R-Va) obatined passage of HB 21 to invalidate the July 1, 2013 sunset clause on the Virginia Space Flight Liability and Immunity Act. It now places the state on par with Florida and New Mexico with no sunset provisions. Virginia was first in the nation to enact human space ride waiver in 2007. The sunset is gone with the wave of the governor's pen.

The Virginia General Assembly past resolutions favoring the Obama NASA FY 2011 budget in recognition the new Taurus 2 booster rocket set to launch from Virginia's spaceport and the prospect of more jobs and contracts to Orbital Sciences Corporation to launch cargo to the ISS beyond 2015, perhaps to 2030.

The Virginia Aerospace Council was extended to advise and assist the governor in making the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport the top commercial launch pad in the nation over the years ahead. There remain staffing concerns to conduct the needed studies due to limited state finances. Several Virginians harbor the idea of Virginia becoming a human-rated commercial space launch pad to the chagrin of Florida aerospace business interests.

On the down side of the ledger, budget amendments to earmark any income or sales taxes derived from spaceflight training or actual human spaceflights from Virginia launch pads or runways were killed in budget committees due to the uncertainly of the tax revenue loss in lean state budget cut by some $4-billion over the next 2-years. Just as well, Virginia-based Space Adventures will not be selling $35-million Russian Soyuz space tourist flights until 2014.

The reaction of Virginia Congressional delegation to the bi-partisan and near unanimous commercial space policy and well-reasoned space budget investment is yet to be seen. The most critical decision to be made about the Wallops Inland, Va. commercial FAA-licensed spaceport originate from the White House and in the Halls of Congress and relate to future prospects of the private suborbital and orbital launch sectors.