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| Space Florida President & CEO Frank DiBello, National Space Club, June 9, 2015 |
On
Tuesday I had the pleasure of hanging out with my space peeps at the National
Space Club luncheon. It’s always a pleasure to see familiar faces, meet new
ones, and hear a great talk.
This
month’s lunch speaker was Frank DiBello giving his annual update on Space
Florida. I keep up on the news well enough to know pretty much everything he
was going to say, but it’s still interesting to note how he says it. Style,
tone, and emphases matter just as much as facts and figures.
Space
Florida is a state entity that focused on aerospace economic development. I’ve
been working with them in various ways for a couple of years now, most strongly
with the Shiloh commercial spaceport initiative, the NASA transfer of the Shuttle
Landing Facility (SLF), and the annual Florida Space Day. I find it all
exciting and a lot of fun!
Frank
began with the usual warnings that Florida needs to evolve. This has been an
issue for several years now. For so many years, Florida had the space shuttle
program to keep us happy and complacent, but when that program ended, the world
shifted under many people’s feet.
We need additional and diverse businesses to
keep our high-tech sector here, and we need to make ourselves business-friendly
to do so. We’ve seen companies choose to set up shop elsewhere because Florida
isn’t evolving fast enough, but we’ve also seen companies such as mine choose
to locate in Florida. Slowly, Florida is becoming a hub of aerospace industry outside of
direct NASA influence. I would like to see it happen faster, but nothing in the
space industry happens quickly.
Frank said that the marketplace votes with its investment dollars and its
feet. We have aggressive domestic and international competition. To
effectively compete, we need to be efficient, low cost, and responsive to the
next generation. Florida can't rely on its space heritage. The goal is to
become a business location.
Frank described his vision for the future of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. He
spoke about the numerous infrastructure projects that Space Florida has
financed, 20 if I heard correctly.
There
is some state political/financial uncertainty at the moment that is holding up
the final approval for the SLF handover, but he will ask his board to approve
it next week. He spoke about turning the area into a private and commercial
spaceport.
Frank
touched on the concept of community. We need a community of businesses and
capabilities to maintain business here. It is a community challenge that we all
have a part in. We are expanding the pool of businesses here who might
want to use the future spaceport. He spoke of future private commercial spaceport operations
under FAA and OSHA regulations rather than Air Force, and that the Air Force
supports moving in this direction (I wish I could be a fly on the wall for
those talks!).
Frank
spoke about simplifying: creating one regulation authority, one proving
structure, and consistency in launch indemnification and insurance. He
envisions evolving to a future where business processes are defined less by
fences and more by marketplace need. Surprisingly, he noted that change needs
to happen not only with federal partners, but also within Space Florida. As
much as I love and support them, the common criticisms are valid: they are slow
and not always responsive. Frank noted this and remarked that changes are
underway.
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| Space Florida video |
I
and a couple others had a chance to ask questions after. Of course Shiloh came
up. The environmental study on the land is progressing, but of course nothing ever happens
as quickly as we’d like. Space Florida gifted us all with Florida state
quarters that have the space shuttle on them. “Space Florida, because it’s who
we are as Floridians,” says Mike Rowe on the talk's concluding video for the We Are Go
campaign.
Some
of the conversations that I had after the talk inspired me, and I’m looking forward
to taking this inspiration forward. As awesome as my career is, somethings it
can seem mundane until someone or something reminds me what we’re all working
for.
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| Tokens from Space Florida - Florida state quarters with the space shuttle! |
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