Spaceport in Paso Robles? City wants to turn its airport into horizontal launch facility
The city of Paso Robles is hoping to transform its underused airport into one of just a few spaceports in the country approved for horizontal takeoffs and landings, breathing new life into its effort to develop the area into a tech hub.
The idea of using the airport to launch space planes — which are essentially the size of a private jet and travel horizontally into the outer edges of the Earth’s atmosphere — isn’t as out of this world as it may seem, Paso Robles Mayor Steve Martin said.
The airport, located at 4912 Wing Way in Paso Robles, has tried and failed to find its fit in the local economy over the years, Martin said, adding there are actually many characteristics to the facility that make it an ideal location for America’s next spaceport.
“Over the years, (the airport) has always been referred to as our diamond in the rough. This is going to be a really important thing to the city,” Martin said.
The characteristics that made the airport unsuitable for commercial air travel are actual advantages for its use as a spaceport, the mayor said, including its distance from urban centers, low population density and minimal encroachment of residential development in the surrounding area.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on our interest to become a spaceport, which is really encouraging for me because you never know when you throw a new idea out there whether it’s going to be viable or not,” Martin said.
The spaceport idea emerged in April when Martin asked Paul Sloan, economic development manager for the city of Paso Robles, and Bill Britton, the chief information officer at Cal Poly, to develop a strategy for how Paso Robles can build off the momentum at Vandenberg Space Force Base to participate in the emerging commercial space transportation industry, according to a staff report sent to the Paso Robles City Council.
“If you can imagine a bookend of space facilities in this county where you have a vertical launch facility in Vandenberg and you have a horizontal launch facility in Paso Robles, then it really makes us a full-service industry serving the emerging space industry,” Martin said.
Since then, the council and airport commission agreed to send the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) a full application to transition the Paso Robles airport into a spaceport certified for horizontal space flight, Sloan said.
Stakeholders are currently working to prepare that formal application.
Why officials think Paso Robles may be ideal next spot for America’s new spaceport
The infrastructure of the Paso Robles airport, such as it’s long, military-grade runway, and more than 320 safe flight days together create an opportunity to re-purpose existing assets to suit the needs of businesses and organizations looking to send their satellites into orbit.
“All of those things add up to something that I think is positioning us very well to take advantage of this emerging industry,” Martin said. “To reposition our airport to be not just a general aviation airport, but to be a spaceport.”
A spaceport in Paso Robles does not mean the private pilots who use the airport will have to contend with more no-fly days and extra airfield security, Martin said. The city will ensure Cal Fire and the California Highway Patrol can still fly out of the airport, and will be leaving the dramatic vertical rocket launches to Vandenberg.
Unlike vertical rocket launches, space planes take off and land from normal airports and travel in the low Earth orbit where they drop their payloads, which typically contain small satellites called CubeSats that can be used to explore the edges of space and collect relevant data, Martin said.
The first CubeSat was developed in 1999 at Cal Poly, and the university’s CubeSat Laboratory continues to develop these tiny satellites today, according to the lab’s website.
CubeSat development has grown exponentially, and the lab has launched more than 1,000 in the past five years, according to the annual report.
Sometimes it can take three to five years for a CubeSat project to make it into orbit because there are so few spaceports and relatively high demand to use them, Martin said.
“Cal Poly’s excitement about this is well, gee, we can ship our CubeSat over the Grade to Paso Robles and launch it tomorrow afternoon — that’s pretty exciting,” Martin said.
Why Paso officials think investing in the commercial space industry will pay off
Paso Robles and Cal Poly aren’t the only ones excited about the prospect of developing a spaceport in SLO County.
The Regional Economic Action Coalition (REACH), a group of public, private, civic and educational institutions that works grow economic opportunity along the Central Coast, has zeroed in on the commercial space industry as a prime opportunity for the region.
An economic study commissioned by REACH and published in May found that investing in Vandenberg Space Force Base could bring in up to 1,968 new jobs and $6 billion to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
Sloan and Martin believe building a spaceport in Paso Robles has potential of its own, creating jobs and bringing a new tech industry to the North County.
The local economy, which depends heavily on wine and tourism, is monolithic and was hit hard by a drop in tourism from the COVID-19 pandemic, Paso Robles city officials said.
While efforts to diversify the local economy through REACH were ongoing, the pandemic revealed the importance of building a more robust technology corridor in the county, which could bring more head-of-household jobs to the city, officials said.
“For every Ph.D, there are 10 to 15 engineer and technician jobs, so there’s just a lot of opportunity that we can do,” Sloan said.
There is also a desire to keep locals that are educated at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo County, instead of creating a revolving door where engineering talent comes to the county for school and then departs to urban areas for work.
“In the future this could represent a place of employment for our locally engineering graduates,” Martin said. “They can work for the companies they want to work for and live in the place where they want to live.”
Coming up, the Paso Robles Airport Commission will meet on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 6:30 p.m. where stakeholders will discuss the next steps in the spaceport application process.
This story was originally published October 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Spaceport in Paso Robles? City wants to turn its airport into horizontal launch facility."
