And they’re off!
On May 3, 2012, the House and Senate each passed SB112 SD1, HD1, CD1 on final reading.
It authorizes $250,000 of state funds to prepare a spaceport licensing application, as long as the funding is matched by federal funds on a 1-1 basis.
It was signed into law by Governor Abercrombie on Friday, May 11.
Three days before it was signed into law, the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism filed a “request for exemption” seeking permission to proceed with a non-bid contract with Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc. valued at $500,000.
The department was racing to meet a grant application deadline of May 11 for an FAA/AST Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching Grant that would “provide the funding required to complete a spaceport application with the FAA.”
Now, how does this work? The application was due the same day as the bill was signed into law. But the request to exempt this contract from the state’s requirement for competitive bidding is still pending.
I have to say that it’s not clear to me why we are suddenly gung-ho over the possibility of space tourism and going to warp speed to push it forward. What am I missing?
Our Hawaii Legislature is out of control. But this what you get when there is no balance between the the two parties. Why don’t we care? Wake up Hawaii.
In this case, your comment is misleading.
The bill was supported by all Republican legislators. Both House and Senate.
No “yes with reservations” by any of them.
Absolutely appalling! We can’t even take care of our aina environment…
I don’t hate the idea of space tourism, but it’s worth noting that Richard Branson talked New Mexico legislators into making taxpayers fund the $209 million spacecraft hangar he intends to eventually profit off of.
Just an example of the kinds of huge costs we can expect down the road.
http://www.thefloatingcityblog.com/blog/2012/4/30/to-hawaii-and-beyond.html
I don’t quite savvy this….the State coughs up $250k which is then matched by FAA/AST to make a total of $500k. So far, so good. But the terms of the grant require 10% industry participation which RS&H agree to kick in. That 10% is only $50k, right?
So why an exemption for a no-bid contract 10x the required minimum investment?
Yes, Ian you are correct. But I guess my point still stands (at least in my own mind) in that so what a small handful of Republicans supported the measure. The few there are don’t dare act like a Republican and they certainly don’t want to rock any boats when you are out gunned to the degree they are. I’m just saying our current legislature has gotten to the point of feeling invincible and at the end of the day that can’t be good. Have a great weekend.
The way I understood the discussion at the Lege, the emphasis here is on the “tourism” in space tourism. Sen. Espero and others say that Hawai‘i would attract more space tourists than New Mexico, because it’s a place more people want to visit. I believe it is also connected to the UH-West O‘ahu redevelopment in ways I never did get clear on.
I wonder about all of that, but mostly I wonder how politicians are allowing themselves to fall for the Space Tourism thing anywhere. Each new jetliner – a technology in service for nearly a century now – costs several billion dollars to produce – I think the new airbus was $11b. How is it that this entirely new technology – which so far as I know has yet to conduct a single manned *test flight* is going to be up and running in three years for a fraction of that cost?
I have not looked into it with any depth, but the whole thing seems like nonsense to me.
i don’t see anything new here. Hawaii’s legislature has done this many times – their focus is to spend ANY federal dollars, no matter how big of a waste.
Hawaii would probably build a bridge to Antarctica, if the feds paid for it and there was no “environmental impact” …………….
o.O
So, Doc Buyer lives on after death. My gosh, and Mufi was not the facilitator ? I am amazed.
why does the term “spaceport” sound so very familiar?
Spaceport…. right.
The only reason they want to be here is to have a launch point as close to the equator as possible to take advantage of the Earth’s rotation. It can add almost 1000 mph to attain the 17,000 mph needed to achieve low Earth orbit. That means less fuel and reduced cost.
And where is the southernmost point in Hawaii? South Point.
Rockets don’t sprout from the ground spontaneously. There’s a lot of infrastructure involved.
And when they get launched it’s all fine and well until something goes wrong. Big chunks of burning debris get scattered for miles, spewing toxic fumes.
Lots of heavy equipment. Tons of dangerous chemicals. And hundreds of support crew, plus their families, permanently housed in the area.
Build and operate this in South Point? Right.
A firm that is sufficiently well-fixed politically to be getting a non-bid contract from a State agency for $500K is about to make a lot of money. In Hawaii, that by itself is enough to justify spending a big chunk of taxpayer money. Why look beyond that for an explanation?
Politicians always get suckered (or bribed) into shelling out taxpayer subsidies. In most cases, private companies make the selection based on many other criteria besides cost. As mentioned above, Hawaii has significant natural geographical advantages. But of course a company will try to negotiate the most favorable terms possible. It’s theoretically possible for Hawaii to compete in other ways (permitting), but of course theory and reality collide.
Suppose a valve goes bad. Are there spares in Hawaii? No. Forget the valve. Suppose s 3 mm stainless steel MIL-spec screw is needed. Do we have them on the shelf?
I’ve laughed at DBEDT plans (including this one). If a spaceport actually goes into service here without losing a ton of taxpayer money, DBEDT will deserve loud applause.
If the money simply goes down the drain, as have previous schemes (stock market, high-tech park, etc.), then why not fire all of them?
They would then see what it’s like for the rest of Hawaii’s citizens who could use the social services that the spaceport money could fund.
Whether or not Hawaii is a better location than New Mexico, NM is up and running already, they have the medium-tech infrastructure needed to support high-tech (which we lack), and have plenty of sources of (say) steainless steel screws nearby.
This silliness fails to pass the laugh test. On the other hand, pork barrel projects are as old as capitalism.
If the gov’t is not going to give people money for their hare-brained ideas, then what is it good for?
Before we all beat up on this project, can we just ask a few questions first?
How much money would this bring into Hawaii’s economy?
First, I think that the politicians, with their good intentions, perceive a “natural synergy” between space tourism and tourism in Hawaii.
Is that the case? Would people who want to travel outside the earth’s stratosphere come to Hawaii to shop and eat in restaurants and bake in the sand? I would suspect that they would skip that altogether. Waikiki would not be on their itinerary at all, I am guessing. I am guessing that there is no synergy whatsoever between Hawaii’s tourism industry and space tourism. The tourists are ultimately going to space, not to Hawaii.
Second, this might be driven to a large degree by the desire to grab federal funds regardless of local costs. Is there any real cost-benefit analysis going on when politicians dedicate themselves to securing federal funds?
For example, it was recently announced that 8,000 Marines will be relocated from Okinawa to Hawaii. That will bring money to Hawaii, but it will also mean greater costs for Hawaii in terms of inflated prices and greater public expenditures (public schools, infrastructure). So in some cases, not all, Hawaii might be the loser when uncritically chasing after federal funding.
Also, those who do press for securing federal funding might be a very small but influential group of developers and tradesmen. Whether or not the project later works or fails is the last thing on their mind. The important thing for them is that they secure work for several years.
Now, I do think that they are honorable people, don’t get me wrong. In the past, they built roads and houses and buildings, and people used them and everybody benefited from that. But as we enter the 21st century, those kind of relatively simple development projects have already played themselves out, and now they are pressing for vastly more sophisticated projects. Some of these project are inappropriate for Hawaii in the minds of more educated people (regardless of ideology), and may ultimately collapse under their own weight even if built.
In this way, the space port project smacks of “Old Thinking” trying its hardest to be forward looking.
In fact, when I saw the the words “Space tourism…” heading the blog entry, I immediately thought of the cartoon “The Jetsons”. “The Flintstones” was set in the Stone Age, and “The Jetsons” were set in the Space Age. But the idea of a “Space Age” today seems really quaint.
When George W. Bush announced that the US would send men to the Moon (again) and later to Mars, and when Newt Gingrich pushes for a lunar colony, the public groaned. Again, it’s a bit like when discussing the big projects in Hawaii, inevitably someone will say, “Look, we’ve been talking about this for 60 years, why don’t we just build it already?” Because it’s obsolete.
In this light, there is something ironic about the state and federal governments funding a spaceport. The whole point of the Ansari X Prize of $10 million for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks — the competition that spurred the development of the technology on which this space tourism is built — was to get the government out of space technology development. Supposedly, for the sponsors of the X Prize, nothing has held back the exploration of space more than NASA. NASA, under the guise of space exploration, originally designed rockets for nuclear missiles during the Cold War. NASA could be a Soviet-style dinosaur.
(The same could be true for Disneyland. People used to go to Disneyland in the 1960s because it was futuristic. Now it feels retro. Disneyland is still fun, but for the opposite reason. But the Disney corporation has not figured it out. In fact, that was also the appeal of “Star Wars” and “Back to the Future” and all those Lucas and Spielberg movies of the 1980s, the irony that the futuristic was already quaint and cliched.)
Someone mentioned above that if Hawaii had a two-party system of competition and not a one-party monopoly, we would not have boondoggles like this. But ideologically, both political parties in Hawaii are all over the place. (There are conservatives like Lingle in the local Republic Party, but they seem outnumbered by fringe libertarians who are not really conservatives properly speaking, along with some contrarian liberals in Kailua who hate the conservatism of the local Democratic Party.)
The trick might be to vote for young people in Hawaii regardless of what political party they belong to.
Abercrombie’s generation used to say “Don’t trust anybody over the age of 40.”
Don’t trust any politician in Hawaii over the age of 70.
Vote young.