Port Canaveral considers expansion to accommodate growing space industry
PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. - Researchers are concerned about running out of room for space operations on Earth and in the atmosphere.
Port Canaveral is dealing with growing pains as the commercial space sector booms. With more rocket launches and recoveries at spaceports also comes more concern about where "space junk" is going and what happens when it's not being used anymore.
Industry leaders are now trying to find more space for space. Here on Earth, the three C’s are taking over Port Canaveral: cargo, cruise, and commercial space companies all want a piece of the port.
"Is it even feasible to expand in and around the port?" asked Robert Long, the CEO of Space Florida.
That’s the question Space Florida and the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) have been trying to answer for the last year. They released a new 67-page report on Thursday looking into concerns and opportunities in the area.
They discovered there was room to expand the port, but it comes at a hefty cost. Long says layout changes are most promising in the middle of the port and would cost around $220 million to complete in the short term.
"That takes advantage of some property that’s already allocated to the spaceport," said Long.
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The construction would happen near the Banana River, and the goal is to improve the flow of rocket booster recovery at the busy port.
While Space Florida is trying to figure out issues with physical space here on Earth, others are worried about running out of space in space.
"We’re looking at potentially having 100,000 satellites in space by 2030. We’re at 12,000 at the moment, and that’s a huge increase," said Melissa Quinn, managing director for Slingshot Aerospace.
Her team tracks launches around the world with AI and just released this report on the issue.
They dug into the issue because they're worried about space junk sitting around in low earth orbit.
"We’re now seeing millions of pieces of debris. In our report, we found there’s now 3,000 inactive satellites that are just hanging out there that at any point could collide," she said. "It’s not just space debris in space. It’s space debris that could come back down."
We just saw that here in Florida. NASA recently admitted that junk that had smashed into a homeowner’s roof in Naples was from the ISS. Quinn says more accountability is needed to de-orbit satellites or send them to a space graveyard way out in the atmosphere.