Virginia Group Tries to Launch 1st Spaceport

If a few scientists, business leaders and state officials have their way, Virginia could have one of the nation’s busiest ports two years from now on this finger-shaped marsh just off the state’s eastern shore, attracting cargo from all over the world.

The facility won’t be for ships, airplanes or buses, but for commercial rockets that will propel satellites and scientific experiments hundreds of miles into space.

With the backing of Gov. George F. Allen, proponents have recently moved forward with an ambitious plan to build a state-run “spaceport” that could launch several dozen mid-size rockets a year from a sprawling National Aeronautics and Space Administration complex here.

They say they expect their efforts to get a boost with the launch of the first commercial spacecraft from the Wallops Flight Facility--a 52-foot rocket, designed and owned by a Vienna, Va., firm, that is to take 14 experiments into orbit 250 miles above the Earth. The launch, originally scheduled for August from a $5-million complex the firm built on NASA soil, was canceled 98 seconds before blastoff because of a loss in pressure in two of the rocket’s six engine nozzles.

A state-operated spaceport, which would include one or more launch pads and towers as well as a facility to prepare satellites and experiments, would cost $2 million to $7 million to construct, supporters estimate.

“Our goal is that if you ask a man on the street in Kansas a few years from now, “Where do you launch rockets from?’ he’ll say: ‘Wallops,’ ” said Billie M. Reed, associate director of the Center for Commercial Space Infrastructure at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Supporters of the spaceport say it could transform Wallops, one of the country’s earliest rocket-launching sites, into a busy complex again. When fully operational, the spaceport could generate hundreds of new jobs and pump $30 million to $50 million into the local economy, Reed said. He said it also could provide jobs to Wallops workers if NASA closes the complex, a budget-cutting move proposed several times in recent years. The project could attract companies that are getting into the fast-growing business of small satellite launches, backers say. Industry specialists estimate that at least 550 satellites will be launched in the United States from 1996 to 2004, many of them to meet the burgeoning demand for global communication and high-technology navigation.