Mojave Air, Space Port gets reprieve

MOJAVE – The Mojave Air and Space Port received an amendment to its spaceport license from the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday, averting a possible loss of the license.
“This came as a pleasant surprise,” General Manager Stu Witt told the East Kern Airport District directors during a special meeting Thursday. The district governs the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Airport officials still need to analyze the document to determine the full effect on operations at the nation’s first inland spaceport.

“Some of the terms and conditions have far-reaching operational implications and require mathematical analysis,” Witt said in an e-mail to reporters. “We are pleased to have something to review which is in the form of a license provision.”

Copies of the amendment have been distributed to the airport’s tenants for their review and comments.

“Absolutely, it’s good news,” he said.

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation informed airport officials in November of its intention to suspend or revoke the space launch site operator’s license Dec. 31.

At issue were questions regarding the facility’s plans for safely storing and handling the energetic chemicals used by rocket companies.

Two explosive accidents at the airport this summer, one fatal, increased regulatory scrutiny on the Mojave facility.

Since that time, the airport and its procedures have been studied by multiple outside agencies, as well as in investigations by the airport itself and the tenants involved.

The multiple investigations have resulted in new safety rules and procedures.

Airport officials have spent the last month working with the FAA to resolve their issues, efforts that resulted in the four-page amendment that arrived Thursday morning.

The license is effective through June 2009, its original five-year term. That may be extended another five years, Witt said.

Director Dick Rutan said he was surprised at the amount of feedback he received once news of the possible license suspension was made public earlier this month.

As the first inland spaceport in the nation and the only one to play host to private, manned spaceflights, Mojave Air and Space Port has been in the vanguard of the emerging commercial “New Space” industry.

“We’re the ones doing it for everyone else,” Rutan said. “It’s so important, just for the perception, that we maintain the viability of our spaceport license.”

Given its standing in the industry, anything that happens at Mojave makes news around the world, from mainstream media outlets to the variety of space-related blogs, Witt said.

“There is a thirst for this industry, and it’s the sizzle,” he said.

Despite moments of frustration, “the exercise over the last 60 days has not been bad,” Witt said, in that it aids in developing the regulatory processes.

“We are doing just as much in this effort of licensing and operation in our culture of firsts as the operators are doing the work of firsts, because we’re plowing ahead on how to set standards, how to craft regulations, how to monitor,” he said.

Previously, the only facilities engaged in these sorts of space-launch activities were military installations, which resulted in weapons-related standards that are not entirely applicable to Mojave’s operations.

“Those standards are being developed right here, and they’re being put into play right here and other people are watching this,” Witt said.

“It’s a process. It’s not a bad process, it’s a process,” he said.

The Mojave Air and Space Port, longtime home to civilian flight testing, became the first inland facility in the nation to receive a space launch operator’s license in June 2004.

The licensing came about just in time for the inaugural space flight of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded manned space program.

The launch site operator license, commonly referred to as a spaceport license, allows the airport to play host to horizontal launches of suborbital vehicles, as well as associated activities such as ground test firings of rocket engines and launch vehicle manufacturing.

The license allows for two kinds of launches.

The first is an air launch, in which the rocket vehicle is carried aloft by an airplane, then released at altitude, where the rocket motor is ignited to carry the vehicle to its suborbital destination, the method employed by Scaled Composites for SpaceShipOne.

The second is a vehicle that would launch from a standard runway using a rocket engine.

FAA amendments keep operating license valid
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Saturday, December 22, 2007.
By ALLISON GATLIN
Valley Press Staff Writer

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