Ohio considering spaceport deal

‘Connecting the players’
The Columbus Regional Airport Authority, which operates Rickenbacker as well as Port Columbus International Airport and Bolton Field, spearheaded months of discussions over bringing PlanetSpace to Ohio, Kathuria said.

David Whitaker, the airport authority's vice president for business development and communications, told MSNBC.com that his organization couldn't offer tax incentives or grants — but is instead serving as a liaison with state and local governments that can.

"We've been trying to connect the players," Whitaker explained.

Matt McCollister, the Columbus Chamber's vice president for economic development, said his group is playing a similar role. "Basically we work together," he told MSNBC.com.

McCollister emphasized that Ohio economic development officials were primarily interested in the jobs, investment, construction and tourism that would be brought to the state, rather than the romantic allure of spaceflight. "The real 'today' elements are the testing and the manufacturing," he said. "There are real dollars and real jobs associated with that. What's to come could very well be the icing on the cake."

With respect to those issues, Kathuria said Ohio officials were told PlanetSpace would create 512 jobs directly and lead to 850 more indirect-impact jobs by the third year of operation. The venture was projected to spend $147 million on local goods and services in the first five years, he said, and generate cumulative gross revenues of $367.5 million by 2012, he said.

Decision by January?
None of the Ohioans was willing to speculate on whether any incentive offer might meet or exceed Kathuria's expectation of $20 million. Ament said PlanetSpace's plans have been under discussion at the Department of Development, but she declined to predict when a decision might be made.

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Whitaker was more hopeful about a timetable: "Certainly within the next month or two, we would expect a conclusion of some sort."

Kathuria echoed that forecast, saying he expected to have a proposal for incentives from state and local governments by the end of January. PlanetSpace wants to begin tests of the suborbital Silver Dart by the end of 2008, and demonstrate the orbital version of the Silver Dart by 2010.

The timetable is dictated by PlanetSpace's ambition to compete in the second phase of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, which would purchase private-sector spaceflights to resupply the international space station after 2010. SpaceX and Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler are receiving $500 million for their phase-one demonstration flights, but PlanetSpace hopes its own privately funded COTS demonstration will put it back in the running for phase two.

"We are going to be competing for COTS 2," Kathuria pledged.

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