Ron DeSantis wants NASA HQ relocated to Florida

Florida’s Governor is shooting for the stars when it comes to the home of NASA under President-elect Donald Trump.

Gov. Ron DeSantis offered remarks on the Space Coast Wednesday regarding the Florida University Space Research Consortium. The multi-institutional initiative drives research, involving the University of Florida, the University of Central Florida and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in conjunction with NASA.

But the memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday wasn’t necessarily the biggest news.

DeSantis said at the Kennedy Space Center that NASA’s future should be in the Sunshine State, with Trump in position to make that happen.

“There is an interest in moving the headquarters of NASA right here to Kennedy Space Center, and I’m supportive of that,” DeSantis said.

“They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it. So why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either. So hopefully with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”

The Governor is “looking forward to what we have in store in the years ahead,” he said.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of momentum in terms of space with the incoming administration. There happens to be some people that are close to the incoming President that care a lot about space,” DeSantis said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of great momentum and you’re going to continue to see a lot of great things. So we’re very well positioned as a state anyways, but now with this consortium, I think it expands our horizons and possibilities.”

DeSantis spoke also to Florida’s tremendous history in space as the most “space-focused state” in the country with “almost 150,000 Floridians working in the aviation and aerospace industries.”

“If you look at the first American satellite in 1958, John Glenn becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 and of course, the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, which put a man on the moon, every single one of those missions were launched from right here in Cape Canaveral in Florida,” DeSantis said.

“This is really special ground when it comes to space. And I think if you look at what we’ve done in the state of Florida, our ecosystem for space has never been better.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke via video statement, and while he didn’t discuss relocation of the agency he’s about to leave leadership of, he did laud the consortium that was Wednesday’s formal news hook.

“I think it’s high time all these years later that the universities of Florida, both private and public come together as you have,” he said, noting that similar initiatives were in play in California and Texas already.

Nelson said “this consortium will be an open door to even more possibilities for the researchers, the faculty and the students that really have an extraordinary position here in Florida” with “opportunities for research and funding, internships and fellowships … for teaching and learning.”