Author Topic: Building a New Highway From Texas to Mars  (Read 476 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Building a New Highway From Texas to Mars
« on: July 06, 2022, 09:20:13 pm »
Texas Bar Journal July 2022 by Victor A. Flores

A Discussion About Adapting to Innovations in Aerospace Law

n 1862, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad companies raced to build the country’s transcontinental railroad. The two tracks competed for a set of government initiatives, including land grants and government bonds for every mile of track built. On May 10, 1869, the railroad was completed, creating an extensive network of tracks that opened up the American West and provided direct travel for the 3,000-mile journey across the United States.1 At the time, it was one of the country’s largest infrastructure projects. It challenged America’s concept of reality, reshaped the scale of commerce, and expanded long distance travel.

Today, companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to establish a more complex intragalactic highway to Mars and beyond. For the skeptics dismissing commercial space travel as a viable possibility, Morgan Stanley recently estimated that the global space industry could generate revenue of more than $1 trillion in 2040, up from $350 billion, currently.2 Additionally, the increasing global demand of satellite-based services has launched a reusable rocket revolution.

As space travel becomes safer and more cost efficient, lawyers familiar with space law and other areas of the law impacted by new space developments will be in higher demand. Just as the railroad needed public-private partnerships to address various infrastructure and financing gaps 160 years ago, building a new space highway will have its own set of unique needs that must be resolved. Texas attorneys need to be aware of the changing legal landscape surrounding the aerospace industry and prepare to provide innovative legal solutions for their clients.

Texas, an Anchor for New Space Innovation

With 98% of SpaceX’s Starship being built in Brownsville, our state has a front seat to this new season of space innovation. In addition to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, SpaceX has communicated plans to expand its testing site at Boca Chica (Starbase) to the list of commercial launch sites.

SpaceX’s South Texas testing site is located within minutes of Brownsville, a tropical city of roughly 180,000 near the Texas-Mexico border and its international seaport, the Port of Brownsville. Helen Ramirez, deputy city manager of the city of Brownsville and executive director and CEO of Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, said, “SpaceX, the most revolutionary rocket company in the world, continues to prove out its technology and economic force in Brownsville, Cameron County, and the great state of Texas.” In 2021 alone, the presence of SpaceX in Brownsville contributed to 1,600 direct employees, supported more than 6,000 jobs in Cameron County, created more than $430 million of direct investment (payroll, construction, and capital expenditure), and added $903 million in gross economic output from aggregate market value of goods and services produced in the U.S. economy. At the state level, during the same period, SpaceX spent $1.05 billion on 742 supplier partners, representing more than 7,100 small business jobs.3

Still, innovators in the space industry—even SpaceX—face significant challenges, including access to funding, regulatory barriers and market readiness. As Marc Gravely, insurance claims and construction attorney and author, stated in his book, Reframing America’s Infrastructure, “The government must mitigate some of these problems, creating an environment more conducive to innovation and success. If cutting-edge space innovators and spacecraft developers cannot find a sustainable business model, space infrastructure will likely suffer.

Effectiveness of Public-Private Partnerships to Fuel Growth

The city of Brownsville has been a prime case study in local government adopting policies of innovation and creativity to meet the demands of an ever-changing landscape of aerospace technology and manufacturing.

More: https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=articles&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=57209