‘It’s boom’: Florida’s space coast roars with rocket launches

TITUSVILLE, Florida. Ten years ago, Florida’s space coast was in decline.

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The space shuttle program ended, and with it the steady stream of space enthusiasts who filled local restaurants, hotel rooms, and motels during regular astronaut launches.

The 7,400 retired Kennedy Space Center shuttles struggled to find work in their fields, and many left for other states.

The county’s unemployment rate jumped to nearly 12%, and foreclosures were rampant after a housing crisis that hit Florida harder than most states.

Miracle City Mall, a once thriving mall that has existed since the Apollo moon launches in the 1960s, was abandoned in the mid-2010s and other shops and restaurants were closed.

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“It was devastating. Along with our nation falling into recession, we lost our bread and butter. We lost our economy,” said Daniel Diesel, mayor of Titusville, which is across the Indian River from the Kennedy Space Center.

Currently, the county has an unemployment rate of less than 3%, and the Space Coast is teeming with jobs and space launches. NASA’s first launch of a new lunar rocket, scheduled for Saturday, was expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors such as Ed Mayall.

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It traveled over 4,300 miles from London to witness the first launch attempt on Monday.

“It’s so exciting, the idea that I can go into space, by myself, perhaps with all the current commercial programs, just makes you want to live it,” Mayall said. “Like it’s just fun to be around.”

While the space business in Florida has been run by NASA and the Air Force for most of the past six decades, this recent rejuvenation on the space coast in the past decade has been provided by private commercial companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, founded by two of the planet’s richest men, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

There are currently multiple launches per month along the Space Coast, with SpaceX launching its Starlink internet satellites every few weeks.

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Perhaps nothing has more marked the return of the Space Coast than the first launch of SpaceX astronauts in the spring of 2020, which returned Florida’s central coast to catapulting people and equipment into space and was the first time a private company launched humans into orbit. The effort attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world and ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA.

As of last year, more than 12,300 government employees, private contractors and other employees worked at the Kennedy Space Center, just a few thousand fewer than the 15,000 workers during the shuttle program’s heyday.

New subdivisions have been allowed along the Space Coast, new hotels have been built, small manufacturing facilities supporting the space industry are being built in industrial parks, and recently a glittering open-air shopping area opened on the grounds of the Miracle City Mall.

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Perhaps nothing has more marked the return of the Space Coast than the first launch of SpaceX astronauts in the spring of 2020, which returned Florida’s central coast to catapulting people and equipment into space and was the first time a private company launched humans into orbit. The effort attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world and ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA.

As of last year, more than 12,300 government employees, private contractors and other employees worked at the Kennedy Space Center, just a few thousand fewer than the 15,000 workers during the shuttle program’s heyday.

New subdivisions have been allowed along the Space Coast, new hotels have been built, small manufacturing facilities supporting the space industry are being built in industrial parks, and recently a glittering open-air shopping area opened on the grounds of the Miracle City Mall.

“We are growing in many ways,” the mayor said. “Our economy thrives when the space program thrives. There is no doubt about it, but we also like to be able to say that we are more diverse than before.”

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He said he was a “space guy” growing up and was familiar with the ups and downs of the space business ever since his family moved to the space coast in 1965 so his father could take a job with the Apollo program. According to him, NASA budgets from the White House and Congress have greatly influenced life on the Space Coast.

Jessica Costa, owner of C’s Waffles in Titusville, recalls how quiet the space coast has become since the end of the space shuttle program. Now that rocket launches happen all the time, she doesn’t take them for granted.

“I’m just happy that he’s thriving so much,” Costa said. “I’m glad they restored the program. I’m happy that people can come and enjoy it with us.”

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