Spaceport New York: The Time Is Now
New York is an elite global city, one of our civilizations premiere urban destinations, and our likeliest default global Capital City in the advent of First Contact. It’s the core of an expansive urban region of immense wealth, diversity, and economic potential while serving as the anchor of global governance and the financial capital of the global economy.
New York has always served as a barrier breaker, offering pathways to prosperity for successive generations of those marginalized and left behind, pioneering dynamic new concepts of urban development, and setting successive stages for social and economic revolutions of justice.
New York has always been home to the next big idea, the newest trend, and strives to bring the most exciting future possible into reality. No dream is too big in New York. New York lives on the edge, and wouldn’t be able to exist any other way. Whenever some new disruption erupts in human society, New York is often on the leading edge of growing, adapting, and surviving whatever challenges arise.
The coming decades will witness an unprecedented explosion of expansion and development off of the Earth, a dizzying array of new space stations, Moon bases, and Mars colonies. Entire sectors and industries will explode from nonexistence to multi-billion dollar behemoths overnight. New knowledge and new technologies will flood our society, enriching our lives and at times upending our day to day reality.
New York is poised to play its’ natural role of global leader once again in this brave new era of space expansion. The state is home to key sources of space industry financing, possesses an expansive cutting edge university system (that is already networked with NASA), and has a long history of being on the cutting edge of aviation and travel innovation. New York has the tools to quickly accelerate into a leading global space hub, setting the table for the future of human exploration and settlement of the Solar System.
It’s time New York got a spaceport.
For clarification, this does not refer to a massive, Cape Kennedy style vertical launch ‘city’ that lofts massive rockets into deep space. This would be a spaceport geared towards horizontal takeoff and landing, opening the doors to suborbital space tourism and the hyper-fast point to point global transport systems envisioned by Elon Musk. Modeled after other commercial space hubs, this new facility would serve as an anchor for the rebirth of New York’s space industry and a new era of investment and development in the state.
While the mechanics of spaceport construction and launch are complicated, the fundamental reality of physics is that rocket launches that occur closer to the equator require less energy (pg. 3). There are also considerations due to population density and downrange risk that would obviously preclude areas around the 5 boroughs of NYC from being heavy lift launch destinations (pgs. 4,5). This is a principal reason why New York is not home to a large, heavy-lift vertical launch spaceport like Cape Kennedy. However, other northerly locations, such as Scotland and Michigan, are moving ahead with developing a diverse array of both horizontal and vertical launch capabilities, proving location is not a barrier for New York Yet and that these are avoidable hurdles, not prohibitive barriers, to New York hosting a spaceport.
The most applicable model for an urban space hub with developing horizontal launch capabilities is Greater Houston, Texas. Houston has announced plans to develop the world’s first urban spaceport, investing more than $20 million to turn an underutilized airport 15 miles outside of downtown into an aerospace R&D community, with FAA certification as a spaceport. This story is simply the latest example of the profound economic impact NASA and space sector investment has on Texas. NASA invests almost $3 billion in Texas annually, supporting more than 50,000 jobs and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into small businesses throughout Greater Houston. Space industry development brings economic prosperity and development to the surrounding region, and commercial spaceflight is an exciting new avenue for development.
These examples demonstrate that despite being both northern and densely urban, New York can still host a viable commercial spaceport. The potential economic benefits of such a development are difficult to ignore.
Long Island has long been referred to as the ‘Cradle of Aviation’. Boasting a highly favorable topography for air flight, Long Island played host to Charles Lingberg on his trans-Atlantic flights, at one point was the home for all American air defense forces, and was the site of construction for the Apollo 11 lunar lander. New York City is the financial heart of much of the space industry, and recent years have seen increasing private investment in what was once exclusively NASA territory. There have been legislative moves to support the space industry in Albany thanks to the work of Assemblyman Clyde Vanel (D-Queens). He has introduced legislation to study the impact the space industry has on New York and it’s future, although it has so far failed to gain a Senate cosponsor or get voted out of committee.
The time has come for New York to seize the moment and establish a concrete vision to bring this bright possible future into reality. Assemblyman Vanel’s bill should be passed immediately at the beginning of the 2021 Legislative Session. This would create the Temporary Task Force on Space Exploration to study the impacts of the space industry in the state and how space industry development should proceed moving forward. Yet bolder action is also necessary to provide the spark bringing this exciting new era into reality.
New York State should also immediately establish the New York Spaceport Analysis and Development Task Force with the sole purpose of identifying the location, overall mission, and initial development architecture for New York State’s first spaceport. This could begin as an Executive order and be expanded when the 2021 Legislative Session begins in January.
It is critically important for this process to involve both local and state governments across the state, industry, academia, and the general public. An inclusive, rigorous framework for analysis and input must be established to offer a clear vision and plan of action.
The goal should be to have at least 2 spaceport concept recommendations for consideration by the Governor and the Legislature for extended analysis and potential development planning no later than January 1st, 2023.
This bold vision would galvanize the people of the state (and the broader region) and mark the start of a new era . If done properly, this development process will nurture K-12 and University communities throughout the state, offer significant and diverse sources of new economic activity, and solicit unprecedented levels of public feedback on important space policy matters.
New York has the potential to be a leading power in humanity’s bold new future in space. We are all now hyper-connected global citizens in an unpredictable, chaotic new age. The future is ours to write. Let’s go get it.
