Virginia aims to claim the next Space Coast

Wallops Island, Va. — They’re rushing to finish the new launch pad. The innkeepers and the ice cream parlors are figuring out how to capitalize on the crowds. And although there isn’t yet enough on display in the visitor’s center to occupy a child on a rainy day, Wallops Island is getting there, gearing up for its turn as the next Space Coast.

The marshy, ear-lobe-shaped land mass southwest of Chincoteague Island is home to NASA’s first rocket-launching site as well as the state-supported Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a scrappy, seven-person operation that is partly run out of an old gas station. With the retirement of the space shuttles, the spaceport is poised to become a major hub of commercial space flight and a tourist attraction to rival the Florida Space Coast at Cape Canaveral. If the fevered predictions of local leaders come true, the expansion of the aerospace industry around Wallops could inject tens of millions of tourist dollars into a regional economy that now relies on an annual wild pony auction and the area’s Mayberry flavor to bring in visitors.

Gallery

 Atlantis and its crew of four astronauts successfully blasted off into space Friday morning, embarking on the last mission of NASA’s 30-year-old space shuttle program.

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“We really are sitting on a gold mine,” said Donna Bozza, director of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Tourism Commission.

Locals got a taste of Space Coast living on June 29, when Orbital Sciences, based in Dulles, sent a military satellite into orbit. The nighttime launch of a 70-foot-high Minotaur rocket had the air of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Cars clogged back roads, and a record 400 spectators filled the beach at the nearby Wallops Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The crowds may get bigger next year when Orbital begins making up for the loss of the shuttle with the first of eight supply runs to the International Space Station. The supply missions are part of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

Orbital chose to launch out of Wallops mainly because it is smaller and less bureaucratic, said company spokesman Barron Beneski. At Cape Canaveral, military launches have priority, which can lead to unpredictable delays for commercial space companies’ business.

“It gets expensive when you’re not able to go on time,” Beneski said. “In terms of priority at Wallops, we’ll be the priority.”

‘Original Space Coast’

The end of the shuttle program marks the start of a comeback of sorts for Wallops, which some locals have dubbed “the original Space Coast.” The first research rocket lifted off from the island on July 4, 1945 — more than a decade before the creation of NASA. Back then, the only way onto the island was by ferry.

Wallops also lays claim to putting the first female astronaut into orbit — a rhesus monkey named Miss Sam. As NASA began sending humans into space, Wallops was eclipsed by the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral. In the 1980s, Wallops Flight Facility, by then under the management of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, became a popular target for budget cuts, and its workforce shrank from 2,400 to 700. Compare that with the 32,000 employed at the Kennedy Space Center at the peak of the shuttle program in 1991.