FYI,

"The Silicon Valley of NewSpace"
The Space Review
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1273/1

: "Today, you're treated to really strange Mojave weather conditions
: this time of year," said Ken Doyle, operations manager for
: AirLaunch LLC, to a tour group visiting the company's engine test
: stands on the north side of the Mojave Air and Space Port last
: month. The "really strange" weather conditions, on a mid-November
: afternoon, were clear skies, light winds, and a temperature of
: about 70°F. "This is very unusual. It should be 40 degrees and
: 40 miles per hour [wind]."

: Even if the weather had been closer to normal, though, it would not
: be difficult to understand why so many entrepreneurial space, or
: "NewSpace", companies have been attracted to the high desert about
: 150 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles. From the test sites on the
: north side of the airport, used for engine tests, to the cluster of
: hangars along the airport's flight line, as well as the wide array
: of aircraft that use the airport's runways themselves, an airport
: once known primarily as a storage site for excess airliners has
: emerged as one of the hubs for the NewSpace industry.

: For example, in the last week XCOR Aerospace successfully tested a
: new engine, the 5K18, that will be used in its Lynx suborbital
: vehicle. The engine, which uses liquid oxygen and kerosene
: propellants, generates up to 11,100–12,900 newtons of thrust; four
: of the engines will power the Lynx on its suborbital missions.
: Masten Space Systems also has been performing engine tests at
: Mojave in the last month for its XA-0.1B test vehicle. And
: WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo, has been
: making series of taxi tests in preparation for its first flight,
: which finally took place Sunday morning.

: This level of activity and concentration of companies have led some
: to liken Mojave Air and Space Port to a NewSpace version of Silicon
: Valley, a comparison the airport embraces. "It is a center of
: aerospace development and a real hotbed of creativity and fantastic
: things going on," Rick Searfoss, chief test pilot for XCOR, says in
: a new promotional video about the airport. "In fact, it's somewhat
: analogous to Silicon Valley, only for the aerospace business and
: specifically NewSpace. The stuff that happens here doesn't happen
: any place else."

: Or, as Dave Masten, president and CEO of Masten Space, says in the
: same video: "Only in Mojave can you be talking to one rocket
: company and listening to another one work."

: It's understandable why companies in Mojave would want to draw
: parallels with Silicon Valley, 500 kilometers to the northwest: the
: Valley is perhaps the best-known region of technological innovation
: in the world, having spawned a series of highly-successful
: companies from Hewlett-Packard and Intel to Apple and Google. The
: comparison is not perfect, however. The companies of Silicon Valley
: share very little physical infrastructure; the density of companies
: there is driven more by access to talent, financing, and other
: factors—including, in a bit of circular logic, the ability to say
: they're based in Silicon Valley.

: The companies in Mojave do get some of those same effects, in
: particular the access to talent, but the bigger draw is the airport
: itself and its features: good flying weather, access to restricted
: airspace, and the ability to do flight testing, rocket engine
: development, and other work not easily possible at most other
: airports. In that sense Mojave is less a state of mind, like
: Silicon Valley, and more of a research park or laboratory for the
: commercial aerospace industry. Or, in the mind of airport general
: manager Stu Witt, a mall.

: "We have a couple of thousand people working here and 40 tenant
: companies. I explain it as a mall," Witt said during a discussion
: November 18th with members of the AIAA's Commercial Space Group,
: who were touring the airport and meeting with some of the companies
: there. "If you've ever seen how a mall operates, you have anchor
: tenants—big stores that fill up the parking lots—and then you have
: a lot of boutiques. The boutiques benefit from the filled-up
: parking lots, and they come and they go."

: "You really try to take care of your anchor tenants," Witt added,
: continuing the mall analogy. "You give your best deals to your
: anchor tenants, give them your best deals, breaks on fuel and land
: rents. You try to encourage the boutiques. Some of them make it and
: turn into anchor tenants. That's our business model."

: It's a business model that appears to be working well for the
: airport. Earlier this month the Mojave Chamber of Commerce
: recognized the airport as its business of the year. "They are just
: doing business hand over fist out there," the chamber's president,
: Rheta Scott, told the Antelope Valley Press. The airport's
: buildings and hangars are fully occupied now, with a waiting list
: for access to them.

: As another sign of its growth, the airport dedicated earlier this
: year Legacy Park, on a small plot of land behind the administration
: building. "That was a vacant lot a year ago, it was just trash out
: there," Witt explained. "That's what your crew can do in very
: little time. Now it's the place where we have our barbeques once a
: month." The park is home to the Roton ATV, the atmospheric test
: vehicle built by Rotary Rocket Company in the late 1990s, as well
: as a full-scale replica of SpaceShipOne. It's a memorial site as
: well: a plaque honors the three Scaled Composites employees killed
: in an accident in July 2007 at the airport while performing a
: propellant flow test for SpaceShipTwo.

: Yet, like Silicon Valley itself—not to mention much of the rest of
: the global economy—Mojave is experiencing the effects of the
: current downturn. Witt said that three of the space companies based
: in Mojave, primarily smaller firms, had gone out of business or
: otherwise suspended operations.

: "I'm surprised, because I thought there would be more," said Witt.
: "I thought in May of this year, with the [economic] indicators what
: they were for the entrepreneurials and the people privately funding
: them, that we would have more business failures occur than we have.
: We were pleasantly surprised."

: Another area of concern is the development of competing spaceports,
: attracting businesses and other activity to them. When Mojave Air
: and Space Port received its FAA launch site operator, or spaceport,
: license in 2004, it was the first licensed inland spaceport in the
: US. However, the Oklahoma Spaceport, at a former Air Force base in
: Burns Flat, west of Oklahoma City, received its spaceport license
: in 2006 (see "Little spaceport on the prairie", The Space Review,
: June 7, 2004). And just last week the FAA awarded a license to
: Spaceport America in New Mexico, a facility whose construction is
: now set to begin in early 2009.

: Witt, in his conversation with the AIAA group, played down any
: notion of competition with spaceports in other states. "The press
: comes in here and asks if we're in competition with New Mexico and
: Florida, and I say no. We're not in competition with anybody," he
: said. The real issue, he said, is whether the country considered
: spaceflight a national priority. "And if we're in it, we're going
: to have to have spaceports dotting the landscape."

: However, at a board meeting later that day of the East Kern Airport
: District, which oversees the airport's operations, Witt
: acknowledged the competition from other states when requesting
: $10,000 from the airport's board to help promote the airport and
: its activities to the new administration. In the minutes of that
: meeting, Witt noted that "the District is competing against sites
: in Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and California that are spending
: huge sums of money to bring in tenants. General Manager [Witt]
: stated that his goal is for the District to stand up and say we are
: doing this to save jobs for tenants that already exist here at
: Mojave. This would send a strong signal to Mojave's tenants that
: the District wants to retain their business for the long run."

: "I really think we have to stay focused—at least at this site—on
: helping the designers, the developers, and the entrepreneurs build
: their space vehicles," Witt said to the AIAA group. "I have got to
: make sure they stay focused, because without them we don't have an
: industry."

: There's also a more personal factor driving that effort. Witt
: recalled being interviewed by CBS' 60 Minutes program when he was a
: fighter pilot at the Navy's "Top Gun" school in 1980 and being
: asked what he wanted to do after flying in the Navy. His response:
: join the space program. "I didn't realize it was easier to become
: first baseman for the Dodgers," he said, adding that, ironically,
: his "backseater" at the school, Pierre Thuot, did become a NASA
: astronaut, flying on three shuttle missions.

: "I'm here for one reason," Witt said. "I want to go." It's a reason
: likely shared by many of the other people and their companies that
: make Mojave their home.

Mark Reiff