November 09, 2020 Although launches at Cecil are delayed, executives looking forward to lift-off
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This was supposed to be the week that everything took off. When the year began, tests for the first commercial launch from Cecil Spaceport — by Space Perspectives — was scheduled to occur last week, with a launch itself this week. Instead, both were postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the spaceport has previously held successful tests, Spaceport Director Todd Lindner has set his sights on “something that’s not a test, something that’s real.”
Now, It’s something he expects to happen in late 2021.
An assessment of the environmental impact that a Space Perspectives launch would have on the spaceport began on Oct. 27. Once completed, it will be submitted to the Federal Aviation Authority.
If approved by the FAA, that would set the stage for a Space Perspectives launch from the spaceport by the end of next year.
“It’s a way for us to go through and confirm that these types of operations will have no more impact on the environment than we are already approved to do,” Lindner said of the assessment.
In addition to Space Perspectives, two other companies — Aevum and Generation Orbit — are working on launch-related projects at Cecil.
Space Perspectives aims to take as many as 14 people and two crew members to the edge of space in a hydrogen-and-helium-filled balloon. Those launches will take place on Florida's Space Coast, but Cecil Spaceport would be used as one of its testing locations.
The activity at the spaceport is just part of the activity at Cecil, where tenants handle a range of aviation-related activities.
Though other sectors of the aviation world contracted severely in 2020, Cecil Airport Director Kelly Dollarhide said Cecil Airport hummed along despite the pandemic. Leasing at the airport remained at 100 percent occupancy. Meanwhile, traffic through the end of October dipped slightly compared to 2019; but, were ahead of 2018 figures.
Part of that decrease Cecil doesn't see commercial flights, but as commercial air traffic slowed during the spring and early summer months, airliners did not send their aircraft to Cecil for repairs. Currently, JetBlue, is among the airliners that send planes to Cecil for repairs.
“We saw an increase in cargo maintenance, definitely, (but not commercial maintenance because) A lot of the airlines parked and did on-site maintenance," Dollarhide said. "They didn’t park at Cecil.”
If anything, the decrease in traffic, compared to 2019, was due to less civilian flight training from Cecil Airport: After a spike in March, the number of general aviation operations plummeted.
There may be two months remaining in the calendar year; but, Dollarhide and Lindner both have their sights set on seeing the heights the airport and spaceport will reach once the first launch is conducted, perhaps as early as next year.