Camden County Administrator Steve Howard sees the planned Spaceport Camden as both a fulfillment of this small coastal countys space legacy and a way to launch the future of the local economy.

On a 12,000-acre brownfield site that in the 1960s tested a rocket for the Apollo program, Howard envisions a launch pad and landing zone, plus ancillary manufacturing and educational services around it, all producing jobs.

We have a 2030 vision for the county and one of those pillars is a successful world class spaceport, said Howard, who attended an elementary school named for astronaut Neil Armstrong but had no other connection to the space industry before undertaking this project. Part of that would be the opportunity to build for the future and for Georgias next generation in Camden.

Critics of the plan, including property owners on nearby Little Cumberland Island and local environmental groups concerned about Cumberland Island National Seashore, are more focused on the risks of launching rockets over their beloved islands. They picture a rocket taking off from the launch site just six miles west of them then exploding and raining down debris, threatening the barrier islands themselves as well as the people on them.

We said we must be missing something, said Kevin Lang, an attorney in Athens whose family owns a house on Little Cumberland. A NASA expert said you cant launch a rocket there without evacuating Cumberland Island and Little Cumberland Island. Georgia law considers that a partial taking and doesnt allow it.

Spaceport plans

Under its proposal to the Federal Aviation Administration, the county would construct and operate a commercial space launch site consisting of a vertical launch site, a landing zone, a control center complex, and another facility that would include provisions for visitors and viewing launches. The site would be offered to commercial operators for up to 12 vertical launches and up to 12 landings per year.

Companies regularly express interest in Spaceport Camden, Howard said, but before it can recruit a private company to build a launch facility the county must get licensing and permitting from the FAA, which oversees commercial space flight. The first step is an environmental review already underway, with a draft expected by mid-year. The FAA bid the review to a third party, Virginia-based Leidos, and the county is responsible for paying the companys $700,000-plus fee for the service.

Another contractor, The Aerospace Corp., is preparing a safety analysis that looks at the risk to nearby people and property from rockets launching overhead. Property owners and the National Park Service worry the analysis will call for evacuations of the islands during launches and landings.

Closures and other restrictions associated with the proposed launch facility will impact the visitor enjoyment and experience for many, NPS Regional Director Stan Austin wrote in a 10-page comment letter in late 2015. In many cases this may affect once in a lifetime opportunities, months or years of planning, financial obligations, time commitments, and or other commitments. Moreover, some closures/restrictions may occur with little notice and create further, more severe hardship.

Spaceport Camden consultant Andrew Nelson said the analysis so far indicates evacuations wont be necessay to meet the FAAs safety standard of one casualty in 10,000 launches. And Howard said until the FAA signs off on the environmental and safety reviews, the talk of whos at risk is just conjecture.

They say youre keeping us from accessing our property. Well, we havent completed that analysis yet. And the fact is you can mitigate, Howard said.

Howard suggested that landowners know when theyre likely to be there and that such data like the peak use of about 100 people at Thanksgiving could play into the analysis. So will the fact that Cumberland limits its visitors to a maximum of 300 a day. Access to Cumberland is also restricted by the ferry, which operates only five days a week from December through February.

But Lang doesnt want to be told when he can use his property at Little Cumberland.

Theyre ignoring a core issue, he said. Its not how often youre there. Its that you have the right to be there any time. Thats part and parcel of private property rights.

Data debate

Some other launch data has already been the subject of debate.

Lang wrote a letter to the editor in the Savannah Morning News putting the odds of rocket failure at 1 in 20. Nelson responded in a op-ed refuting that number and putting it at to 1 in 100 after throwing out data on foreign rockets.

Bill Ostrove, aerospace/defense analyst for Newtown, Conn.-based Forecast International Inc., came up with a number in-between.

I typically use the roughly 1-out-of-20 failure rate that Mr. Lang used in his article, he wrote in response to an inquiry from the Savannah Morning News. However, Mr. Nelson is correct that that is a global figure. I looked through my database of launches and filtered out launch vehicles built by American companies.

Using those recent American launch stats, the success rate over the past five years is just about 97 percent, Ostrove said. That works out to a failure rate of 3.09 percent, or 1 in 32.4.

Ostrove didnt include a SpaceX Falcon 9 that blew up on the launch pad in September 2016, since that technically blew up before the launch, not during. If that were included, the failure rate becomes 4.08 percent or 1 in 24.5. But there are reasons to exclude other failures, too. The Antares that exploded in 2014 has been heavily modified by its prime contractor (Orbital ATK) since the explosion, he wrote. In addition, the Super Strypi that failed was an experimental Air Force rocket.

Another factor, is where in the flight path the rocket fails, Ostrove said. The Antares, for instance failed seconds after liftoff, while it was still directly over the launch pad. Basically, its difficult to determine exactly how dangerous a failed launch would be to the surrounding community.

Proxy war

As the licensing and permitting of the facility makes its way through the regulatory process each side is jockeying to get its arguments front and center. A proxy battle erupted over Georgia House Bill 1, The Georgia Space Flight Act, and an identical Senate bill that would shield commercial space companies from litigation brought by injured passengers, paving the way for manned space flight in Georgia, a possibility not yet contemplated for the Camden site.

In a Facebook video, the bills sponsor, Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, discusses the fact that many of the opponents of the bill who own property on Little Cumberland dont live there full-time. He shows a map of the county showing voters identified as red dots. None appear in the expected rocket trajectory cone over Cumberland and Little Cumberland.

These are a handful of folks, he said. Theyre wealthy and they have means to influence this legislative process up here in Atlanta. A lot of them live up here in the Atlanta area, Athens. Some of them live outside of the state of Georgia. These folks are trying to determine the economic fate of Camden County and southeast Georgia. And really the entire state of Georgia because really this is a statewide project. This bill would affect the entire state.

Joyce Murlless, a Savannah resident who has long owned a 2-acre undeveloped lot on Cumberland and recently bought a modest house there, said she doesnt recognize herself in that description.

I dont consider myself rich, she said. Frankly, Im not.

Along with her late husband Dick and John Crawfish Crawford, Murlless founded the nonprofit Wilderness Southeast and spent her career educating children and adults about the outdoors.

Dick and I bought in (to Little Cumberland) when we were in grad school, she said, noting that they had to be considered good conservationists to buy on the island, which is entirely within the boundaries of a National Seashore.

The Little Cumberland Island Homes Association Inc. consists of 100 lots, each with a single owner. There are 43 cottages. The groups mission statement is to own, protect, maintain, and preserve the island and all of its habitats in as natural a condition as possible, while setting aside a portion of the high ground as second home sites for members. Where conflicts occur between these two objectives, preservation and the natural integrity of the island shall be the prevailing consideration.

Still, Howard said, there are Little Cumberland owners who welcome the Spaceport. He points to Craig and Mary Root, who wrote to legislators to express support, saying we believe there will be a significant economic impact in Camden which will lead to head of household jobs and has the potential to positively influence Georgias Coast and our State as a whole. We also support a stringent Environmental Impact Study as part of the decision-making process.

The majority on Little Cumberland reflect the concerns of the National Park Service, Lang said.

We have been painted as being selfish, elitist, second home owners who dont want to be inconvenienced by a spaceport, he said. This narrative, while politically useful by Rep. Jason Spencer and the leadership in Camden County, is far from the truth. The common thread among Little Cumberland Island owners is a deep appreciation for the island and a desire to preserve and protect it.

Howard is fond of saying You take a risk doing something. You take a risk doing nothing.

On these two islands where large swaths remain wilderness, many prefer the latter.

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Little Cumberland spaceport promises jobs, threatens islands - Savannah Morning News