"California airport bids to become spaceport"

Monday, September 15, 2003

Airport bids to become spaceport
By ALLISON GATLIN 
The Antelope Valley (CA) Press


MOJAVE - The Mojave Airport is one step closer to adding a new designation
to its name: spaceport.

The East Kern Airport District, which governs the airport, has applied to
the Federal Aviation Administration for a license to launch space vehicles.
If granted, it would make the site the first inland spaceport in the
country.

"We tell a fairly compelling story about why this is the place to do it,"
General Manager Stuart Witt said.

The district recently submitted its application - an inch-thick binder of
information - that should be reviewed by FAA officials this month.

The airport, already home to seven rocket and space exploration companies,
receives regular inquiries about using the facility for launches, Witt said.

A launch license would likely bring in even more such companies, he said.

Mojave Airport's previous experience should give it something of a head
start in the approval process.

The application shows the airport has a long history of successfully
negotiating joint airspace agreements with the Air Force, Navy and NASA,
something the FAA did not believe possible for a civilian organization.

It also has a 10-year track record for rocket engine firings, complete with
the requisite licenses and permit with the EPA, Kern County Fire Department
and Kern County Air Quality Control District.

"(The regulators) assume no one has ever fired a rocket motor here," Witt
said.

"We're doing it already; we've been doing it for years."

"It's an education process."

Another point in favor of granting a launch license to Mojave is the site
anticipates only conducting horizontal launches, with rockets taking off
from a runway like aircraft or being dropped from a carrier vehicle.

Other launch sites are along the coasts to allow vertical launches that are
not over populated areas.

"It's certainly the best site in the country for reusable, horizontal runway
launch and glider landing," Witt said. "We're the only ones looking at
reusable (vehicles)."

Mojave is poised to break new ground in terms of FAA licensing.

The only space-related line of business within the FAA, the office of
associate administrator for commercial space transportation, or AST , was
established as part of the U.S. Department of Transportation and transferred
to the FAA in 1995. The office is responsible for licensing commercial
launches of orbital rockets and suborbital sounding rockets.

When work started on regulating the emerging industry, the conventional
wisdom was all launches would be vertical. Reusable rockets taking off from
a runway and returning to land like gliders were not envisioned, Witt said.

However, the concepts under consideration by the airport's tenants, such as
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne, are based on this airplane-like design.

"If Scaled Composites were to launch a rocket in their concept tomorrow,
nothing would change," Witt said. "I clear an airplane for takeoff and a
glider to land."

Another tenant, XCOR Aerospace, already has proved that with successful
flights of its EZ-Rocket rocket-powered aircraft.

The FAA launch site license would allow companies to take it a step further
with sub-orbital launches.

"We need it for our tenants," Witt said. "We need it for our future.

"The future of Aerospace Valley is on the brink of emerging in a whole new
era."


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