Hopes Cecil Field Will Become The First Operational Commercial Spaceport

The Jacksonville Aviation Authority (JAA) thinks that Cecil Field, a former Navy master jet base in Florida's Duval County, can become the nation's first truly commercial spaceport.

Bob Simpson, the senior director of Cecil Field, and JAA spokesman Michael Stewart, told reporters this week that a spaceport license for Cecil Field is "officially imminent." A licence is one of two steps required for a commercial spaceport.

You remember Cecil Field? One of the "small airports" excoriated by other media outlets for receiving FAA grants?

Cecil Field

To qualify as a commercial spaceport, a facility has to have the capacity to accommodate horizontal launches and arrivals. Cecil Field officials say the environmental work has been completed, and that they expect the approach corridors to be officially sanctioned by the FAA. "The next part," Simpson said, "is to obtain a company that is involved in commercial space travel for horizontal launch and arrival to use a licensed airport.”

The online news service "The Miami Examiner" reports that Virgin Galactic's Sir Richard Branson has been to Cecil Field looking at the facility, but that company is setting its sights on, and has a contract with, Spaceport American in New Mexico. Simpson said they are talking to other entities as well.

Simpson said Cecil Field meets a unique set of criteria necessary for becoming a commercial spaceport. "We were approached by Space Florida several years ago," he said. "The requirement they set for commercial, horizontal launch space was a 10,000-foot runway, minimum of 200 feet wide, with no commercial passenger service at the airport. So they looked around Florida, and there was only one.” Cecil Field was the only airport in Florida that met all the criteria.

If licensed, Cecil Field would become the 8th private spaceport in the country, and the first to be used for commercial purposes. The others are still used by military interests, according to the Examiner. The FAA says that currently, the only other potential commercial spaceport site in the southern U.S. is in Alabama.

FMI: www.jaa.aero