None of it might have happened were it not for a tragedy that led to an economic calamity. After the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas killing its seven astronauts in 2003, the accident investigation reached a conclusion everyone knew was coming: the program, the orbiters, and their technologies were approaching dangerous obsolescence. Congress pulled the plug, and NASA accepted the fate. As the program wound down over the next eight years, as many as 10,000 space shuttle jobs drained away from Florida. Worse, it was clear: there would never be another NASA program like it. Ever. The gravy days of launch-support operations appeared to be over. NASA, too, had a problem. Billions of dollars worth of Kennedy Space Center assets were headed into mothballs, and prospects were bleak that future government space programs would need much of them ever again. “Following the retirement of the shuttle we set a goal to diversify the industry,” DiBello said. “Essentially, the industry was so severely impacted by yet another cancellation of a large federal program. We suffered several times in our history, especially in the Space Coast area. We had to diversify.” That meant space business couldn’t be just about launching. NASA, never previously known for flexibility, decided to play along. Under Administrator Charlie Bolden and Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, NASA agreed to turn Kennedy into a public private space industry center. Almost anything was available. Using Space Florida’s expanded corporate powers to offer complex financial deals that include state and local incentive money and creative banking, NASA’s willingness to lease out Kennedy facilities, and the aggressive outreach of the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast, they’ve managed to start building a new space industry. Lockheed Martin and Boeing agreed to assemble spacecraft at Kennedy. Musk, Bezos, Wyler, and the others brought in new operations. A handful of small, start-up space companies began appearing on the coast, in Orlando, and elsewhere in Florida. “We are no longer just launching rockets,” DiBello said. “Now we are building the rockets that we launch.” Yet those businesses are adding jobs by the dozens, or the hundreds, while the retirement of the space shuttle took them away by the many thousands. There still are long stretches of boarded-up old space facilities, not to mention the houses, shops, and restaurants that served them, up and down Florida’s Space Coast. There still are many former Florida space workers now living in California or Virginia, or, still in Brevard 30 | INFLUENCE WINTER 2016
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