The Guardian by Tom Dart 11/22/2018
Famously the home of Nasa’s Mission Control, Houston is struggling how to stay relevant to modern spaceflight. Is a new spaceport the answer?Houston has a long and proud connection with space exploration. It is home to the Johnson Space Center, the Nasa hub best known for hosting Mission Control. But as the US government squeezes Nasa’s budget and cedes much of its work to private industry, high-profile tycoons such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson are generating most of the buzz around the future of American spaceflight. And they are elsewhere.
In an attempt to stay relevant, Houston is transforming its 101-year-old Ellington airport into a major spaceport. “It keeps the city at the cutting edge of space and maintains it as Space City USA,†said Mario Diaz, director of aviation for the Houston Airport System, which manages Ellington and the city’s two major passenger airports, George Bush Intercontinental and Hobby.
“In 2010 there was a decision made by the US government to get out of the financing of low Earth orbit, the missions to put up satellites and things like that. What we’ve been doing over the last eight years is transitioning from a government-led space programme to a commercially driven space programme.â€
Musk and Bezos have set up shop in other parts of Texas. Musk’s SpaceX is building a launch site by the border with Mexico, while Bezos’s Blue Origin has a launch facility in the remote west of the state. In a sign of the competition between cities and the importance of political lobbying and financial incentives, Houston lost out to Huntsville, Alabama, last year when Blue Origin was deciding where to place a new manufacturing plant.
Houston’s spaceport has struggled for lift-off, but last month the city council approved spending almost $19m on infrastructure development such as roads and utilities. That is a fraction of the public money lavished on Spaceport America, the country’s best known commercial spaceport, which has been subsidised by New Mexico taxpayers to the tune of more than $200m. Branson’s Virgin Galactic is based there, near the vast White Sands Missile Range military testing ground. It will charge space tourists $250,000 for a few minutes of weightlessness 62 miles above terra firma. Last month Branson said the company’s long-awaited first voyage beyond Earth’s atmosphere was imminent.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/22/houston-we-have-a-spaceport-can-the-city-stay-ahead-in-space-travel
