East Coast's Only Horizontal Launch Spaceport Looking To Increase Business

Cecil Spaceport has an aggressive plan to begin generating a small profit after five years of operation. That's the assessment offered by a "Strategic Business Plan Executive Summary" obtained by the Jacksonville Business Journal through a FOIA request.

Cecil Spaceport, which is also the location of Cecil Airport and the former Navy Master Jet Base in northeast Florida, is the only spaceport authorized to conduct horizontal launch operations on the east coast of the U.S. The Jacksonville Airport Authority (JAA) told the paper that it hopes to eventually have about 40 percent of the horizontal launch market in Florida, an estimate described as "conservative" by JAA officials.

But JAA is also trying to invest as lightly as possible in the venture, relying as much as it can on leveraged grants for funding for the spaceport.

The plan details a business model that has two permitted operators and two leases.

The only operating partner at Cecil Spaceport so far is Atlanta-based Generation Orbit, which hopes to launch cubesats with a rocket carried aloft by a Gulfstream G IV airplane. Generation Orbit was awarded a small business research contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory earlier this year, and according to the Cecil Spaceport executive summary, it could begin limited launch activity at the spaceport sometime in 2017.

(Image from file)

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