Fwd: Does Virginia's spaceport have the right stuff?

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Date: April 14, 2013 8:46:58 AM GMT-06:00
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Subject: FW: Does Virginia's spaceport have the right stuff?

The Associated Press

 

NASA's obscure Wallops facility in Virginia prepares for spotlight

By Brock Vergakis

 

WALLOPS ISLAND, va. — On one of Virginia's small barrier islands, a NASA facility that operates in relative obscurity outside scientific circles is preparing to be thrust into the spotlight.

 

On Wednesday, Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to conduct the first test launch of its Antares rocket under a NASA program in which private companies deliver supplies to the international space station. If all goes as planned, the unmanned rocket's practice payload will be vaulted into orbit from Wallops Island before burning up in the atmosphere on its return to Earth several months later.

 

The goal of the launch isn't to connect with the space station but to make sure the rocket works and that a simulated version of a cargo ship that will dock with the space station on future launches separates into orbit. Orbital officials say that should occur about 10 minutes after liftoff.

 

In that time, Wallops Island will transition from a little-known launch pad for small research rockets to a major player in the U.S. space program.

 

The Wallops Flight Facility, on Virginia's rural Eastern Shore, is small in comparison with major NASA centers such as those in Florida, California and Texas. Wallops Island's isolated nature, with marshland to its west and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, has also made it home to a Navy surface warfare combat center.

 

More than 16,000 rockets have been launched from Wallops Island since 1945, but none has drawn the attention of Antares. Most of the launches are suborbital and focus on educational and research programs.

 

"The real transformation here at Wallops is we've always been kind of a research facility," said William Wrobel, the facility's director. "So this transition is really kind of into an operational phase, where we're going to be doing kind of regular flights out of here to the space station."

 

A successful launch would pave the way for Dulles-based Orbital to demonstrate it can connect its unmanned Cygnus cargo ship with the space station this summer. If that's successful, Orbital would launch the first of eight resupply missions from the island in the fall under a $1.9 billion NASA contract.

 

Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

 

 

 

 

Does Virginia's spaceport have the right stuff?

 

On Wednesday , NASA Wallops expects to launch its biggest rocket by far -- the 135-foot, medium-lift Antares, built to resupply the International Space Station.

By Tamara Dietrich, tdietrich@dailypress.com | 757-247-7892

 

April 14, 2013

 

All his life, 65-year-old Craig Purdy has had his eye on the sky.

 

As a teenager in sleepy, rural Chincoteague in the early '60s, he watched "rocket shots" out of nearby Wallops, then a Naval air station on a marshy 6-square-mile slip of barrier island in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. Small sounding rockets would soar into the upper atmosphere and beyond, hovering to study the winds, the sun, the moon or the elements before tumbling back to earth.

 

Purdy's father was a retired Navy man and electronic technician at the station; while an engineering student at Virginia Tech, Purdy worked there, too. After college he was hired full-time, conducting satellite research for decades before retiring last summer as deputy director of NASA Wallops Flight Facility.

 

"Until probably 10 years ago, I could tell you everybody's name that worked in Wallops," said Purdy. "Everybody knew each other. Everybody worked together. It was like a family atmosphere."

 

The oldest continuous-use launch site in the country, NASA Wallops has undergone many incarnations since 1945, when it began as a pilotless aircraft research station.

 

Now it's poised for its biggest transformation yet.

 

On Wednesday , it expects to launch its biggest rocket by far — the 135-foot, medium-lift Antares, built to resupply the International Space Station. Until now, the biggest rocket ever launched out of Wallops was the 70-foot Minotaur.

 

The event will mark a turning point in the flight facility's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, or MARS, which state leaders hope to turn into nothing less than America's best spaceport, and a major hub for the emerging commercial space industry.

 

"We don't have pretensions that we will become Cape Canaveral," said Dale K. Nash, the new executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority that owns and operates MARS. "But we want to grow more capability here and become a major player in the U.S. space program."

 

The right stuff

 

Many believe MARS has the right stuff to do it.

 

Its biggest commercial customer, the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corporation, chose Wallops for the expertise of its NASA staff, its uncongested schedule that allows for more predictable launches and its geography, which offers an ideal inclination to launch to the space station.

 

Orbital developed and built the Antares, but has been building smaller launch systems for 30 years. Some 600 of its rockets have put about 150 satellites into orbit, helped test U.S. missile defense systems and furthered scientific research, said spokesman Barron Beneski. The company today employs more than 3,500 people and generates annual revenues approaching $1.5 billion.

 

In 2008, Orbital became one of only two commercial space transportation firms to land a NASA contract to resupply the space station. The other is SpaceX, started by PayPal founder Elon Musk, that made history last May by becoming the first private company to dock with the space station.

 

"They've done a very good job," Beneski said. "Now it's our turn."

 

Spaceports are chosen depending on the needs of the mission, and this year Orbital will be using Wallops much more than any other launch range, Beneski said.

 

After Wednesday's test launch — if it's successful — will come a launch as early as the summer so Orbital's Cygnus cargo spacecraft can prove it can dock with the space station. And after that, Beneski said, will come the first of eight resupply missions through 2016. Orbital plans to launch all of them out of MARS.

 

"We can be flexible and we can be responsive," said Nash. "And we are certainly working to be very cost-efficient. All of those things can make you very, very attractive to customers."

 

Nash joined the Authority last August after spending 14 years in Florida launching space shuttles, then nearly six years running Alaska's space program. Heading up Virginia's revved-up spaceport ambitions, he said, has been "like drinking through a fire hose — but it's also got a familiar taste."

 

According to the Authority's five-year strategic plan for MARS, released in December, the spaceport has other things going for it:

 

•It's far enough from heavily populated areas to allow for safe launches and the ability to control the surrounding environment.

 

•It's close to aerospace firms in Baltimore, D.C. and Hampton Roads, and already has relationships with top-ranked research institutions and universities, such as NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

 

•Its main customer — Orbital — already secured a lucrative NASA contract.

 

•Virginia offers tax and financial incentives to commercial space companies operating in the commonwealth.

 

•And it's already licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for orbital launches. Only three other states — Florida, California and Alaska — have achieved licensing. More than a dozen other states have expressed interest in building spaceports, Nash said, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

 

"You can't just say, 'I'm going to put rockets out,'" said Nash. "You have to clear air space and clear sea space."

 

But the strategic plan also found competitive weaknesses at Wallops: Limited acreage on the small island should the Authority ever want to expand with a large-lift launch pad; a risky reliance on NASA for much of its contracts and on the state for funding; and aging infrastructure surrounding the facility.

 

Money and jobs

 

For state legislators and a succession of Virginia governors, luring commercial space business to Virginia has meant investment and jobs, much of which has been migrating overseas.

 

"The entire commercial satellite business that the United States used to own outright," said Nash, "that has gone to the European Space Agency. Russia, China and India all got a lot of that market, and that's a significant number of launches we'd like to see migrate back on shore."

 

Much of the allure of the commercial space market is that it's been a growth industry even during hard economic times.

 

Nationally, total wages and salaries for the industry from 1999 to 2009 rocketed from $16.4 billion to $53.3 billion, according to FAA estimates. In 2009, the total economic activity generated was more than $208 billion.

 

In Virginia, the broader aerospace industry is a big part of the economy, with commercial space transportation a big part of that.

 

In 2009, the aerospace industry contributed a total of $7.6 billion to the state's economic output and supported 28,110 jobs, or nearly 1 percent of total employment.

 

Jobs in aerospace are also far more lucrative on average than other fields. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Virginia has more scientists and engineers as a percentage of the workforce than any other state except Massachusetts, and ranks third behind Massachusetts and New Mexico in the concentration of high-tech jobs.

 

While the average income in Virginia in 2009 was $48,334, the average income in the state's aerospace industry was $99,385, according to state Department of Transportation figures. And each of those higher-wage jobs supports 2.11 additional jobs elsewhere in Virginia.

 

Orbital has already contributed substantially to such job numbers, beefing up its employment in Virginia in recent years from six to more than 1,800.

 

From 2006 to 2015, the company estimates it will have contributed $18 billion to the state's gross domestic product and created more than 1,000 direct jobs and about 2,600 indirect jobs.

 

It estimates its Antares program alone over the next 15 years could mean overall economic activity in the state of $4.25 billion.

 

Ahead of the curve

 

Wallops launched its very first rocket on July 4, 1945, when it was part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor.

 

Since then, it has launched more than 16,000. In 1960 came the Scout — the first capable of placing a satellite into orbit.

 

"The most spectacular was probably the one that didn't work," recalled Purdy, still a boy at the time. "It went up and got to a certain altitude and wasn't working right, and they had to destroy it. It was quite a scene. … Fireworks went off in different directions and little pieces here and there."

 

The failure demonstrated the practical advantages of having a rural launch site next to the Atlantic, far from heavily populated areas.

 

When NASA began manned space missions, Wallops' small launch pads just weren't capable of handling the heavy-lift rockets required, so the facility became overshadowed by Cape Canaveral in Florida.

 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Wallops' funding and workforce shrank, and it concentrated on its strengths: rockets and balloon launches to test aircraft models, study space and Earth science, shoot satellites and telescopes into orbit, and hone re-entry and life-support systems for the human space program.

 

Today, it serves as NASA's primary suborbital research facility.

 

The pivot toward the commercial space industry began as early as the Reagan Administration, which in the 1980s encouraged privatizing space transportation.

 

In the mid-90s, engineering professors at ODU suggested using Wallops as a hands-on "enterprise center" for their students. According to Oktay Baysal, dean of the school's Batten College of Engineering and Technology, they saw long-term potential in a commercial spaceport.

 

They even saw potential for civilians in space one day, he said, and suggested the state make space travel one of its transportation modes and place it under the Secretary of Transportation.

 

"So we were way ahead of the curve then," Baysal said.

 

At the university's suggestion, the General Assembly in 1995 formed the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority to operate the spaceport, with ODU engineering professor Billie Reed at its helm. It was headquartered at ODU, which began funding the effort, but placed under the authority of the state Secretary of Technology, rather than Transportation. A $3.6 million, small-class launch facility was built.

 

The state partnered with Maryland on the spaceport, since many Wallops workers lived across the state line just to the north. They named it the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to make it more inclusive.

 

But a key reason to ally with Maryland, said Baysal, was to court its powerful senior senator, Barbara Mikulski.

 

"We were after her," he said with a chuckle. Not only does Mikulski love space and technology, he explained, but she heads the important Appropriations Committee, which funds NASA. It also didn't hurt that NASA Goddard is in her district.

 

Such connections helped the Authority secure the Air Force as a lucrative spaceport customer, he said, launching military payloads and easing the financial burden on ODU.

 

"Once we got the Air Force contracts, I was free and clear," Baysal said. "Because I was paying the salaries of everyone from ODU for years. I was sort of under pressure — 'Why are you doing this? It's been 10 years.' And I said, 'Hang on, hang on, the time shall come.' And it did. We did not give up."

 

By then, they had established a relationship with Orbital, so when the company won its NASA contract, the Authority promised to build a brand new liquid-fuel launch facility to handle medium-lift rockets if the company agreed to launch from MARS. The $145 million facility was finished last summer.

 

"Now it's becoming real," Baysal said.

 

Boldly go

 

With Orbital as a key client, many Virginia officials have begun to believe the sky's the limit for MARS.

 

In 2011, a state-funded study found MARS needed to remake itself to better compete with other spaceports, so the state shrank and restructured the Authority's board of directors to make it leaner and more broad-based. That's when Reed stepped down and Nash came aboard. And it realigned the Authority under the Department of Transportation, as ODU had first advised.

 

The study also cautioned that Virginia was at a crossroads in its commercial space ambitions and needed to decide how much it was willing to commit to — and risk on — the market for "new big commercial space."

 

In its subsequent five-year plan, the Authority devised three possible funding scenarios, and legislators chose the "opportunistic midcourse:" Invest just enough to nimbly service a rapidly growing industry, without risking significant public funds.

 

Last year, the General Assembly committed to spend $9.5 million a year through 2016 from the Transportation Trust Fund to develop the infrastructure at MARS, attract commercial customers, boost economic growth, establish partnerships for research and commerce, and explore space tourism.

 

Officials agree that MARS can expect to see an increase in launches over the next few years, including up to four medium lifts a year. Beneski said Orbital's goal is to get its NASA contract renewed to continue its resupply missions "as long as the station continues and they need cargo."

 

In 20 years, said Nash, he envisions MARS as "one of the busiest commercial spaceports in the U.S., if not the world."

 

The strategic plan also notes the potential for space tourism, and said the Authority will "actively monitor" the emerging market and "assess its viability at MARS."

 

NASA has an 8,750-foot horizontal runway at Wallops that could be used for suborbital reusable launch vehicles. The plan notes that billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic in New Mexico is making major investments in space tourism, including spacecraft designs that could launch from a horizontal runway.

 

"We have talked with them," said Purdy. "They're still working on getting the kinks out of their system. I know they talked to people at Wallops, and they said, 'Once we get it straight, we'd like to come to the East Coast and be able to launch out of the East Coast. We're one of — if not the — prime site they're looking at."

 

Want to watch?

 

The launch of the 135-foot Antares rocket should be visible throughout Hampton Roads, but NASA Wallops suggests two main viewing sites for those who want a closer look:

 

•Wallops Visitors Center located along Virginia Highway 175 in Accomack County: http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/wvc/

 

•The beach on the south-facing Assateague and Chincoteague islands, although the capacity is limited according to time of year and state of the beaches.

 

For mission updates, call the Wallops Information Line at 757-824-2050.

 

TELEVISION COVERAGE

 

NASA-TV will have coverage of the launch, beginning at 4 p.m. Liftoff is scheduled for 5 p.m. with a daily launch window that runs until 8 p.m. For NASA-TV schedule and video streaming information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

 

*If necessary, back-up launch opportunities are April 18-21

 

Copyright © 2013, Newport News, Va., Daily Press