While lauding a new partnership among Florida universities and Kennedy Space Center, Gov. Ron DeSantis shoehorned in a pitch to have NASA headquarters leave the nation’s capital in favor of the Sunshine State. “There is an interest in moving the headquarters of NASA right here to Kennedy Space Center and I’m supportive of that,” DeSantis said noting he had discussed it with KSC Director Janet Petro ahead of a ceremony held at the space center Wednesday. “They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it, so why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either,” he said. “So hopefully, with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”
DeSantis spoke during an event that saw Petro sign a memorandum of understanding with the Florida University Space Research Consortium, a group created last fall with the help of Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority. Founding partners in the consortium include the University of Florida, University of Central Florida and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It now officially acts as the state’s space research entity to help with awarding NASA research grants in partnership with KSC. DeSantis touted that partnership as fitting for the Space Coast. “If you look at the first American satellite in 1958, John Glenn becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 and, of course, the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, which put a man on the moon, every single one of those missions were launched from right here in Cape Canaveral in Florida. This is really special ground when it comes to space,” he said.
He highlighted other facets of Florida’s space footprint noting Space Florida’s efforts, such as attracting new aerospace manufacturing and launch facilities, are projected to add $1.1 billion annually now for the next several years. He said the state had more than 2,700 aerospace and aviation establishments, 21 commercial airports and three spaceports: Cape Canaveral, Jacksonville and Titusville. “They’ve allowed Florida to lead the nation as space exploration has flourished in recent years, of course, now with private sector investment,” he said.
Comment: Not a bad idea at all. The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral already has 10,000 plus NASA people working there. The NASA headquarters in DC has less than 2,500. Most of NASA is already spread throughout the country. Even our Wallops Island Flight Facility has over 1,100 NASA people working there. In my opinion, this move would be a no brainer. The DC office could still function much as the SOCOM Washington Office (SOCOMWO) functions. SOCOM’s vice commander sits there with a sizable staff and serves a vital purpose for SOCOM. In the same way, the NASA deputy administrator and a staff would remain in DC. Besides, trading DC real estate prices and DC traffic for the Florida space coast doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me.
TTG
Well…there is always the rising water. The “space coast” may have a finite shelf life.
Drain the Swamp! Move it to Florida, they need more swamps…
Seems like traditional Pork-Barrel politics, same way Houston & Huntsville got their big slices of the NASA pie.
The real Swamp is K-Street. Moving NASA HQ out of DC just makes things easier for the Lobbyists.
the difference is that those Centers were not moved, but created from scratch at the initiation of America’s Space Age when everything was cheap, easy & quick. Houston was definitely a LBJ move, but at least he delivered Congress to pay for it all. MSFC was indeed pulled in by seniority system Senators Sparkman & Hill, but US Army Ordnance (who happened to “possess” the German rocket team as War Booty, & nowhere else to dump ’em) delivered a near perfect site (what else ya gonna do w/ CBW & bomb factories after war’s over?), w/ one of the largest sources of running water & cheap Federal hydro-electricity. labor & RE at near developing world costs were a bonus.
however, DeSantis does sport NASA-colored Go-Go boots… so, could be quite a battle.
10,000 people @ Canaveral? How many are employed by civilian firms like Blue Origin, SpaceX etc and not federal or federal contractors? Seems like a lot of overhead. Similarly, 1,500 people in DC? Why that many? 1,100 at Wallops Island?
looks like a lot of RIFs are coming
oh yeah… that’ll be efficient. moving headquarters is a sure way to ruin large enterprises. in line w/ “draining the swamp”, forget the Space Coast … just move it straight to More-A-Larceny. given American folks are abandoning the Flooding / Sinking State in droves, gotta shore up the collapsing RE mkt too. Russian oligarchs & associated gangsters getting a little stretched for cash these days, somehow.
to mangle Pete Townsend, “Meet the New State, Same as the Deep State, but Shallow”.
There are a few empty lots along NASA Blvd in Melbourne, FL where they could settle among the contractors that work in part for the space program. I have a few neighbors who work for NASA and a few more would be OK. After all, this area is known as the Space Coast. Besides, as I once told a former director of the Kennedy Space Center, NASA can burn up tax payer’s money faster than all the others. We are talking about millions in mere minutes.
The real home should be that of NACA at Joint Base Langley/Eustis.