Scott Powers
Space Florida is pursuing a deal to have moon landers built in Florida.
Florida’s space development corporation’s board of directors gave the go-ahead Monday for the staff to negotiate a deal with Orbit Beyond, one of the companies being considered by NASA to provide lunar landers as the space agency develops its plans to go back to the moon with equipment and eventually astronauts.
The company is considering building lunar landers in Florida, and this deal would set that up, with Space Florida set to lease space in its office building at Exploration Park outside the gates of Kennedy Space Center and to lend up to $1 million to the company, for a term of four years, at market interest rates.
In exchange, according to Space Florida Executive Vice President Howard Haug, Orbit Beyond would commit to establishing a lunar lander assembly and integration operation somewhere in Florida and to hire at least 10 Florida employees with an average salary of $75,000.
Space Florida President Frank DiBello pushed the proposal as another prospect in the agency’s strategy to expand space operations from just launches to manufacture of spacecraft and equipment.
“This is an example of destination hardware,” DiBello told the board. “We’re very proud of the fact that Florida has always been a point of departure for things going into space. But as we are now going to destinations in lower earth orbit and to the lunar surface and beyond, it is a major objective of ours to capture as much of the destination hardware, and have that built and manufactured in Florida and have it prepared for launch,” DiBello said.
The deal was one of several the board authorized Monday, including one that was announced in February, for Firefly to develop a rocket factory at Exploration Park and two complex finance-assistance deals to help unidentified airplane companies expand operations in Florida.
The Firefly deal involves a 20-year lease on 18 acres at Exploration Park with a couple of renewal options.
The other two involve large bridge loans that Space Florida would arrange through lease-back deals for equipment.
An unidentified, commercially traded company that requested anonymity because of Securities and Exchange Commission rules wants to set up a $125 million loan to funnel through Space Florida to build a new flight simulation training center in South Florida to replace and expand an existing one. The company, being identified for now by Space Florida as “Project Prime,” is pledging 73 new jobs at average annual salaries of $80,000. The loan would be for 20 years, secured by the flight simulation equipment and paid for through leases of the equipment, which would be owned by Space Florida.
The other, identified as “Project Midnight Blue,” is seeking a similar financing arrangement for $12.3 million for the consolidation of aerospace composite materials testing centers from California and Florida at a location in Florida. Space Florida’s staff and board did not discuss the location of the facilities, though Haug noted that the Pinellas County Economic Development Commission is supporting the request along with Enterprise Florida. That company is pledging 42 jobs with average annual pay of $68,000.
“There is no risk to Space Florida or the state of Florida,” Haug told the board.
