THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505270396
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
After almost 35 years at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore, Ray Stanley was ready to kick back.
Trouble was, he couldn't bring himself to sign the retirement papers. There was unfinished business, the very same thing that brought him to Wallops one sweltering July in 1960: space.
Wallops is poised to become Virginia's first commercial spaceport, and Stanley wants to be part of it. Port proponents hope that monthly small-satellite launches from the Eastern Shore facility will become routine by the turn of the coming century.
``I changed my mind because of the spaceport,'' said Stanley, who is Wallop's main point of contact for companies who want to send small payloads into orbit. ``We here at Wallops are anxious for it to begin immediately. It is time. We have to hurry.''
Speaking Tuesday night before the Virginia Aerospace Business Roundtable, Old Dominion University engineering professor Laurence D. Richards said spaceport organizers are $1 million shy of their initial $2 million goal to get the spaceport off the ground.
The group, which by this July will be known as the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, is about to send a $1 million funding proposal to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce. If obtained, the money would be combined with other state and private funds to expand an existing Wallops launch pad to accommodate small-rocket launches.
The funds would also be used to create a payload processing facility in a nearby building and pay for related maintenance costs.
``We're working feverishly to make this happen,'' said Richards. ``If we don't get started in half a year, we could be behind the eight ball. Then it may never happen.''
Speed is essential, Richards said, because the pace of technology development is accelerating. Companies that specialize in personal mobile communications are looking for launch sites and launch experts to handle their precious payloads.
Competition for their business is international. The French space agency, Arianespace, is the leader in commercial rocket launches. The Russians are also strong competitors.
Aerospace firms are planning to launch about 550 satellites between 1996 and 2004. If fewer than half those launches take place from Wallops, the facility could occupy itself with one launch a month for the next nine years.
Wallops is one of only three rocket facilities in the continental United States and the only one wholly owned by NASA. The others are Florida's Cape Canaveral and the U.S. Air Force's Vandenberg base in Lompoc, Calif. While Wallops isn't designed to handle large rocket or space shuttle launches, it can accommodate rockets of more modest size.
Under the spaceport plan, payloads of up to 8,000 pounds could be sent into space from the Eastern Shore.
``The decision about what to launch and on which vehicles are being made right now, or are pending,'' Stanley said. ``Any major delay will just about kill this thing. There are other places where these launches can take place.''
According to ODU's Richards, a Wallops spaceport could pump more than $60 million into the Eastern Shore economy and create 300 jobs there within five years. There could also be a ``halo effect,'' similar to that enjoyed by Silicon Valley in California or the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, which could attract other high-tech businesses to the area.
Chances are good, said Eastern Shore economic development official R. Keith Bull, that the feds will see fit to pump dollars into the spaceport effort.
``There's a very strong probability (the project) will be funded,'' Bull asserted. ``The money's there. I would be totally shocked if we didn't get funded.''
The venture comes at a welcome time for Wallops, the 1950s-era cradle of the American space program.
Wallops sidestepped outright closure in 1993. This time the facility is caught in a governmentwide budget vise that is squeezing the nation's space agency particularly hard.
NASA's funding request has been slashed by at least a third, from a requested appropriation of $22 billion a year through 2000. Likewise, Wallops is likely to see its $128 million annual budget slashed by as much as 20 percent, according to Stanley. The facility's airplanes likely will be transferred to a NASA center in California and, with them, nearly 50 civil servant and support contractor positions.
Various support services at Wallops - a print shop, photo lab and technical library - could either be privatized or eliminated altogether, affecting another 50 workers.
While Stanley insists that the reductions will taking place by attrition, Wallop's present work force complement of 920 is likely to shrink by at least 10 percent.
So, using NASA personnel to provide a wide variety of launch services to the private sector would be of benefit to all parties.
As a rocket range, the Eastern Shore site has for years launched hundreds of research rockets, mostly for scientists and universities. A Northern Virginia company, EER Systems Corp., is planning a late July launch from Wallops of one of its own rockets, the Conestoga.
At the heart of the rocket complex is a three-year-old mission control center. Also on the grounds is an airport, storage for solid and liquid rocket fuel, machine shops, blockhouses, and fire and security services.
The spaceport group estimates that Wallops launch costs, at $500,000 per firing, would be about half as expensive as the $1 million average cost to launch small payloads out of Cape Canaveral. According to Richards of ODU, the difference is due mostly to much lower administrative overhead.
``There are things here that don't exist anywhere else in NASA,'' Wallop's Stanley said. ``It (the spaceport) gives us another reason for being and an important job to do. Having a commercial operation here makes for a good match.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color graphic
by CNB