For two legislators, their proudest moment in the 2009 legislative session came with passage of a bill giving the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism half a million dollars to buy a spaceport license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Half is to come from the state\u2019s Airport Revenue Fund, the rest is to be drawn from the Tourism Special Fund.<\/p>\n
Sen. Will Espero told the Honolulu Weekly<\/i> that passage of the measure, House Bill 994, \u201cwas the most important economic development issue of this session.\u201d Rep. Gene Ward told the Weekly that the bill provided \u201cthe single biggest boost to our future economy\u2026 Hawai`i will no longer be the same because of this bill.\u201d So enthusiastic was Ward, in fact, that he posted his thoughts on the subject in a video available on YouTube.<\/p>\n
The measure was supported by the Office of Aerospace Development, an arm of DBEDT. OAD\u2019s director, Jim Crisafulli, has described the scenario he envisions for space tourism in Hawai`i. Tourists from, say, Hokkaido will take a hybrid business plane (powered on takeoff and landing like any other, but capable of getting to suborbital space through the use of rockets once the plane is well above the Earth). The flight to Honolulu will take less than an hour, he says. Once in Honolulu, the tourists will train for a week at Kalaeloa, preparing for their weightless ride. \u201cThen they\u2019ll be flown to the Kona airport, stay overnight one night, and then on the return, they will fly up to 62 miles and have this space experience, roughly about 4 minutes of which will actually be weightless,\u201d Crisafulli says. (Crisafulli\u2019s description of the way the space-tourist industry would work can also be found on YouTube, where he is interviewed by Gene Ward in \u201cA Word with Ward,\u201d a talk-show formatted video.)<\/p>\n
According to Crisafulli, no modifications will be needed to Hawai`i airports to accommodate the space travelers. \u201cThe launch facility is just a commercial airport,\u201d he says. Because of this and the fact that most Hawai`i airports are near the ocean, thus reducing safety considerations, Hawai`i can more easily obtain a license from the FAA, Crisafulli says, using the programmatic environmental impact statement the agency prepared for sub-orbital commercial flights.<\/p>\n
Just how attractive is the space-tourism scenario?<\/p>\n
In his testimony on the bill, DBEDT director Ted Liu stated that space tourism in Hawai`i could generate \u201capproximately $200 million in annual gross revenues from user fees.\u201d That, he said, was based on the business projections of Rocketplane Global, \u201cone of several companies that have approached our state to request permission to launch these types of vehicles from Hawai`i as early as 2011.\u201d Rocketplane Global had also proposed developing a \u201cterrestrial space-themed education and training center\u201d at Kalaeloa, Liu said.<\/p>\n
No one mentioned just how expensive the \u201cspace experience,\u201d as Crisafulli described it, would be. But Virgin Galactic is selling rides on its spaceplane for $100,000 a pop. Rocketplane Global is advertising rides at the truly stratospheric rate of $250,000 per passenger.<\/p>\n
In further support of the aerospace industry, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 537, establishing an Aerospace Advisory Committee. The 16 members are to \u201cadvise and assist the legislature and state agencies in monitoring, assessing, and promoting aerospace development statewide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six members are to come from the aerospace industry (three representing state aerospace interests, the other three representing the larger industry). One member is to be an investment banker. Each of the economic development boards of the four counties is given a seat, as is the state Department of Education. The University of Hawai`i system has three seats (one from the Manoa campus, one from the Hilo campus, and another one representing the statewide community college system). The last seat will be occupied by the chairman, \u201cwho shall have experience, knowledge, and expertise in space-related activities and development in the global and state aerospace industry.\u201d DBEDT is to provide administrative support. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n \u2018One of the Dreams of my Childhood\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What follows is a partial transcription of remarks made by Rep. Gene Ward in a YouTube video about Hawai`i space tourism.<\/i><\/p>\n Today is April 30, 2009. And today is a historic day. Hawai`i will never be the same after passage of House Bill 994. House Bill 994 creates Hawai`i as a spaceport. It has immense implications for the future of tourism.<\/p>\n We\u2019re already the center of normal tourism, where people come and go, but now the tourism we\u2019re talking about is space related. Number 1, it\u2019s space travel with weightlessness that we will have here in a matter of years, I would say probably two or three years at the most.\u2026 A tourist\u2019s dream \u2013 one of the dreams of my childhood, in fact. \u2026<\/p>\n But the more exciting thing for tourism, in addition to the weightlessness, is the ability for rocket planes to take off normally and land normally, but again after they get up two miles, they shoot their rocket engine and then they trajectory, as in a rocket plane, above the earth\u2019s atmosphere, and then re-enter, for example, from Hawai`i to Hokkaido, that\u2019s Japan, just north of Tokyo, forty-five minutes. Honolulu International, Sapporo, Hokkaido \u2013 forty-five minutes. With passage of this bill, it\u2019s not only for the fun for the tourists, but it\u2019s for the economic growth of this state\u2026.<\/p>\n Hawai`i will never be the same for people\u2019s motivation to come here or, when they come and go, down the line in a number of years, when we actually have rocket launches. Normal takeoff and landing, so there\u2019s no environmental difficulties. But they\u2019re going to be able to go through, above the earth, and then back into the atmosphere, at a tremendous saving of time and, hopefully, money, even though right now it\u2019s still experimental.\u2026<\/p>\n For More Information<\/i><\/p>\n Ward\u2019s video on HB 944 may be found at: [url=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=K3vU64RCghs]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=K3vU64RCghs[\/url]<\/p>\n The video in which Crisafulli describes the space-tourism scenario may be found at: Volume 20, Number 1 July 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For two legislators, their proudest moment in the 2009 legislative session came with passage of a bill giving the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism half a million dollars to buy a spaceport license from the Federal Aviation Administration. … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-july-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n[url=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xwTtxcxRW8g&feature=channel_page]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xwTtxcxRW8g&feature=channel_page[\/url]<\/p>\n