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Who Said That?

"Our flight participants will be ecstatic in flying from Florida."

-- Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer of XCOR

A new breed of vacationers — space tourists — could launch from Central Florida as early as 2015 thanks to a new agreement that would put Florida officials in charge of the 3-mile runway at Kennedy Space Center that once was used by the space shuttle.

The preliminary deal, to be announced at KSC on Friday by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, would give Space Florida control of one of the largest landing strips in the world and one that's enshrined in space history: Nearly 80 shuttle crews landed there before NASA ended the 30-year program in 2011.

Now it looks likely that the shuttle runway will host a new different type of space traveler: tourists and scientists making suborbital trips on new "space planes" that can launch and land from the massive landing strip.

Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.