We have before us an opportunity to join together to form a symbiotic relationship between nature and a newborn commercial space industry in its formative years.
We are, at this minute, creating a Spaceport Environmental Model (SEM) that the world will follow when constructing future international spaceports.
Brevard’s commercial space industry must coexist with our natural resources in a non-destructive, if not beneficial, manner.
Kennedy Space Center Repurposed
NASA is quickly working to divest it’s non-mission critical facilities and vacant land at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). KSC’s Master Plan describes repurposing the aging federal launch facility into a commercial industrial park and state run spaceport.
The plan displays a map showing over 8000 acres of “developable land” available to the commercial space industry, some of which is deep in the heart of the National Refuge and Seashore. We stand to lose a National Wildlife Refuge, a National Park, a National Estuary, and numerous archeology sites.
Commercial Space Industry at KSC
What’s the future environmental impact of an unknown, unregulated industry? Local and state zoning, planning, and environmental practices must be applied within KSC’s public areas.
- Building Codes, Density, Urban Planning
- Allow sprawl or set limits that preserve the natural environment?
- Loss of an internationally iconic panorama due to building heights.
- Set launch limits. 10,000 launches a year predicted!
- Modernize transportation, waste treatment, and stormwater infrastructures
Commercial Spaceport
Should a 2021 state run commercial spaceport inherit the same environmental exclusions that were provided to NASA and KSC during the Cold War? A public commercial spaceport should be regulated like any other modern industrial port in America. Our current airport and seaport regulations should be applied, until specific spaceport policies are determined.
- Environmental Regulation, Monitoring and Open Reporting
- Self Supporting
- Charge vessels a usage fee to support the port facility and operations.
- Passenger Embarkation fees? The ISS may soon be the world’s first SpaceBnB!
- County Tourist Tax (ie:Orange County) to promote tourism, improve infrastructure, and build recreation facilities for Brevard’s residents.
Open Our Eyes
For decades KSC has operated under a veil of national secrecy. The space center’s true effect on the estuary’s water and atmosphere is unknown. The lack of public monitoring has created a huge hole in our water and air quality data.
As this formerly classified federal installation transforms into a public commercial spaceport, it’s true environmental impact should become public information. Waters within Florida’s spaceport should be managed by state agencies (FDEP, SJRWMD and FWC) that provide:
- Publicly Shared Air, Water, and Soil Monitoring Data
- Accurate TMDLs and BMAP
Paradigm Shift – A New View of the Indian River Lagoon
Indian River Lagoon, Merritt Island Refuge, Canaveral Seashore and our nation’s top environmental groups must quickly join together in one united voice, to bring about a paradigm shift in NASA’s view of the Indian River, Banana River, and Mosquito Lagoon environments.
- Do not pass on Cold War era Environmental Exclusions to the state’s Spaceport. It’s 2021, environmental science has come a long way in 60 years.
- Preserve the largest undeveloped coastal property remaining on Florida’s East Coast.
- Protect endangered and threatened species.
- Limit future KSC wetland mitigations to the IRL estuary watershed
- Improve Water Quality
- Share data from real-time water monitoring systems
- Allow FDEP to determine accurate TMDLs and meet their allocations
- Remove or modernize NASA’s modifications to the estuary
- Restore the Flow. Remove all earthen berm causeways.
- Restore the Filter. Open the marsh impoundments.
- Restore the Shore. Replace hard embankments with living shorelines.
We may have been powerless to question a federal space center’s environmental policies, but we can have a voice in state run spaceport policies.
We must use a powerful, unified voice to speak against outdated environmental exclusions and specify the future environmental policies of Florida’s commercial space industry.