Lawmakers support spaceport for Mojave

Posted on: Apr. 24th, 2006 || Source: 1bakersfield.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Lawmakers support spaceport for Mojave

The California Legislature has moved a bill to invest $11 million in the Mojave Spaceport. Noting competition from other states and nations, the Senate Committee on Transportation voted on a bipartisan 8-1 vote in favor of Senate Bill 1671 by State Senator Roy Ashburn that will ensure a competitive advantage for the first, and only, inland spaceport in the United States.

The measure would establish a loan mechanism for the East Kern County Airport District, which is home to the Mojave, California spaceport, through the state’s Infrastructure Bank for the purposes of constructing research hangers and an astronaut education terminal at the Mojave Spaceport site.

A launch site operator license was granted by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to the Mojave Airport on June 17, 2004 – making it the first inland spaceport on the books.

The Mojave Spaceport has already enabled one piece of history. It was from this location that the pioneering flights of the piloted SpaceShipOne suborbital rocket plane took place.

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