Residents of one Georgia county were pitched on a spaceport as a way into a projected trillion-dollar industry, but 7 years later, it still hasn’t been built. “We’re paying taxes year after year after year for the spaceport but nothing has materialized.”
is vying to compete with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin to put payloads into space.
“This happens in any technology market — it’s inevitable,” Autry said. “It’s no different from the boom that you had with the internet in the ‘90s or the crypto investors a few years ago. You get a lot of people where this is not their domain and they make poor investment decisions.” “I quickly saw that the economics were going to be challenging even if rocket launches did occur,” Weinkle said. “As a taxpayer, I became very worried about that.”It’s the only licensed spaceport in the country that proposes flying rockets over people and their homes, on two nearby barrier islands, Cumberland Island and Little Cumberland Island.
Megan Desrosiers outside the Camden County Courthouse in Woodbine, Ga.; East River, near the proposed site of Spaceport Camden on July 7. Environmental groups worry that operating a spaceport in the area could harm the region’s salt marshes. In the event of a rocket failure, fuel and debris could rain down on federally protected sanctuaries, said Megan Desrosiers, executive director of One Hundred Miles, which works to preserve Georgia’s 100-mile-long coastline.
Some of those questions focus on a consultant named Andrew Nelson, whom Howard tapped in 2015 to help develop the project and navigate the county through the licensing process with the FAA. In a contract from July 2015 that was obtained by NBC News, the county agreed to pay Nelson a retainer of at least $10,000 per month to assist with the spaceport’s environmental review and to craft business plans for the site.
Nearly a decade later, the Midland International Air & Space Port still has not held a licensed launch. Wetlands outside the Union Carbide site in Woodbine, Ga.; outside the security gates of the Union Carbide site; Camden County Courthouse in Woodbine, Ga., on July 7. Kevin Lang, an Athens-based lawyer who is involved in a pending federal lawsuit against the FAA that challenges Spaceport Camden’s license, said this type of opaque environment is ripe for potential bad actors. Lang's wife's family owns property on Little Cumberland Island, one of the barrier islands that rockets from Spaceport Camden would fly over.
Howard said several companies have expressed interest in Spaceport Camden but declined to identify them by name, stating that he is subject to nondisclosure agreements. In a series of internal emails obtained by NBC News through records requests, FAA officials seemed to acknowledge as far back as 2018 that being able to safely launch medium-size rockets from Spaceport Camden was unlikely, in part because of the people living on Little Cumberland Island.
“In my career, we were never permitted by the range safety authorities to launch when there was anybody in the launch danger area,” he said.People onboard the Cumberland Island ferry in St. Marys, Ga., on July 8. A tourist takes photos of feral horses on the grounds of the Dungeness Mansion on the southern end of Cumberland Island, Ga., on July 8.
George Nield, who worked for 15 years in the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, including as associate administrator of the department, said the FAA only considers safety regulations when evaluating a spaceport application. It’s not the agency’s role, he said, to consider the economic viability of a spaceport, but he acknowledged that communities can get in over their heads if proposals are not well thought out or if they are built on unrealistic expectations.
Remnant chimneys from former slave cabins on the Stafford Plantation on Cumberland Island, Ga., on July 8. The outcome can have an enormous impact on spaceport communities, with perhaps the most high-profile example in the sprawling desert of a New Mexico town called Truth or Consequences.Constructed more than a decade ago on 18,000 acres of public trust land, Spaceport America billed itself as “the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.
Virgin Galactic's carrier plane makes its way across the apron in front of Spaceport America following a test flight over its new permanent home near Upham, N.M., on Aug. 15, 2019. There are, however, some signs that aerospace activity may be picking up in New Mexico. In early August, Virgin Galactic purchased a site in Sierra County, near Spaceport America, for a planned “astronaut campus” that will include training facilities, recreation areas and accommodations.that the space tourism site will “spur further economic activity for New Mexico, creating more local jobs and attracting new visitors and spending to the area.”Spaceport America in Truth or Consequences, N.M.
. It found that building a spaceport was “unnecessary” to jumpstart and fuel a space-based economy in Michigan.
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