Space Florida's Vision for 2020, Extended Version

Frank DiBello was named president of Space Florida in September after serving as interim leader of the group formed in May 2006 when the Legislature consolidated three existing organizations, Florida Space Authority, Florida Space Research Institute and Florida Aerospace Finance Corp. DiBello formerly served as president and CEO of Florida Aerospace Finance Corp. He spoke with Florida Trend about Vision 2020, Space Florida’s long-range plan.
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Florida Trend: Can you share your vision of Space Florida’s current mission?
Frank DiBello: I clearly see the role of the organization in economic development. We’re responsible for providing growth, health and robustness to the space industry in the state. It is truly about jobs and economic contribution to the state from the space industry.

I told the governor I would focus on four priorities:

1. Creating a vision for what we want the space industry in the state to achieve.
2. Focusing on communications and outreach so we make this activity in Space Florida an inclusive forum. We want to be open in our dialogue, listen more than we speak, practice the principle that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason and take advantage of the tremendous talents and insights that are already in people who have lived here a long time and are part of the space industry. We want to do this on a statewide basis so we are listening to people in the Panhandle, Tallahassee, Tampa and south Florida. It’s truly to make this a statewide industry with statewide growth.
3. Concentrate on aggressive business development.
4. Leverage our assets.

The vision was the first thing. It was critically important that we lay that out. We call it Vision 2020. It’s a goal to expand and grow the size of the space industry by a significant amount by the year 2020, as measured in jobs and economic contributions to the well-being of the state.

FT: Did you attach a number to how many jobs you’re projecting?
FD: We’re going to set a reach goal for tripling the size of the space industry in the state by 2020. A lot of it depends on what you’re counting as your baseline right now. We are clearly embarked on an effort to identify a baseline and use that as a measure. And I believe in report cards, so I want hard measures for that growth in both jobs and economic contribution.

I hope to have a document, which we’ll call ‘The State of the State’s Space Industry,’ by early February in time for use by the legislative session but also as a baseline document for all the areas of Florida we intend to communicate with.

We’re doing that right now internally, and that’s the best way for us to get a handle on it. But I want to stress that we’re in partnership with all the other statewide organizations that are looking at economic development issues. So we’re working very closely with the Florida Chamber, the Associated Industries of Florida, Enterprise Florida, the Council of 100 and like organizations in Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa and the Panhandle. Our effort will include the best information we have from all of those sources, as far as the current issues and challenges and space industry activity.

FT: What is the biggest challenge facing Space Florida today, and how do you expect to address that challenge?
FD: Near term, clearly the challenge we’re facing is a significant loss of jobs coming about as a result of a natural transition from an era of the shuttle to an era of a future space flight program. Simply because we’re going from a shuttle system, which is reusable and requires a lot of hands on turnaround touch time, to an expandable system that doesn’t require that same level of workforce, we’re going to have an economic impact on the shuttle workforce. This will be exacerbated by the fact that there’s some uncertainty in the direction of the nation’s future space program. Hopefully, that will be clarified in the near future by the White House.

And now I can shift to the more strategic view that while none of the alternatives the White House is considering are without some hurt for Florida, there is some optimism because Florida is the nation’s place for launch of next-generation human space flight, and we are also positioning the state to be the gateway to the International Space Station and its use as a research laboratory. So we see a lot of opportunity in what will evolve as our civil space program.

But we are just as excited with our partnerships with the Department of Defense and with commercial industry. The strategy for the state’s space future lies in two areas: Diversification of the space industry and developing vertical integration of our supply chain.

When we talk about diversification in our vision, we’ve identified 10 market constellations or sectors we intend to develop. Three of these are our traditional core capabilities:

1. The launch systems, where we will always be strong in spite of competition.
2. The components that fly on top of those vehicles, whether you’re talking about the International Space Station or satellites. That is a sector of the industry that’s strong and can become stronger for Florida.
3. Anything on the ground that allows us to exploit or use the equipment we put up there in space. Florida has a rich heritage of skills and capabilities in designing ground systems, whether they’re for use here in Florida or on the moon or some other destination.

The other seven sectors relate to using space in some way to benefit mankind: Agriculture, climate and environmental monitoring; civil protection and emergency management; cyber-security and robotics; adventure tourism; clean energy applications; and new products.

Space enables the advance of technology in many, many areas, and it’s a horizontal industry, so it cuts across each of those areas. We want to grow the industry in Florida in each of those areas. In doing that, we hope to bring the benefits of space back to Florida.

If you think about the communications industry, as an example, it’s the first industry that exploited space for commercial benefit. Space is pervasive in our everyday life because people have used satellites for communications, broadband services, GPS and GIS applications, remote sensing. There’s a whole host of capabilities and businesses in Florida that support those sectors, and we want to help them grow. We want to help our agriculture industry use space technology to become more efficient and drive down their costs. We’re interested in attracting new civil protection and emergency management capabilities to Florida. So by diversifying our space industry, we’re also diversifying our sources of funding to feed that industry. For too long, we’ve too closely identified with just NASA, and that’s not an accurate reflection of Florida’s space industry.
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FT: What kinds of efforts are you seeing in other states that might mirror those of Space Florida?
FD: Other states see space as a catalyst and economic driver for their state economies as well — and, for that matter, other nations. There are 31 spaceports around the world either existing or planned because other nations have discovered the power of the space technology to be a driver for their economic future. There are 14 spaceports existing or in some state of obtaining licensing in the United States.

We shouldn’t look at these as competition. The more space activity we can generate around the globe, the more the sea will rise and we’ll all rise with it. Florida will always be the No. 1 place to do business because of our rich heritage, the investments we’ve already made in infrastructure and our extensive, highly qualified skilled workforce, which is why so many companies want to come here.

FT: What is the long-term challenge?
FD: Sustaining the economic growth to meet our goal by 2020. Diversification is never easy, but I believe it is the right strategy. Being able to drive the development of a robust supply chain in this state is also important.

Let me give you an example. We made an investment at the state level to a building that was available at the Kennedy Space Center. It enabled us to bring final assembly and integration work to the state for a spacecraft, the Orion, for the first time. Typically things were produced in other states and shipped here for launch. Bringing that final assembly and integration work here opens the door for tremendous growth in the supply chain that supports that final assembly and integration.

FT: What do you see as the organization’s largest accomplishments to date?
FD: We developed and are managing a number of key elements of infrastructure that will enable robust growth in the future. These include the space by sciences lab, the Orion facilities and a number of launch complexes. We’re going to continue to develop infrastructure to attract new launch business here at launch complexes 46 and 36.

We’re engaged in aggressive business development activities, both near term and long term, to not only fill some of that gap we see in the workforce but also to start building toward our long-range goal. I’m pleased with the number of opportunities we see on the horizon.

FT: What is Space Florida’s role in the drive to privatize space travel?
FD: We will have a robust future in space tourism. First it will be adventures to the edge of space, then suborbital flights and then all kinds of things are possible, like going to a space station or beyond.

The important thing is there are a number of companies planning to provide those services and developing spacecraft. Virgin Atlantic went to New Mexico because they can fly 365 days a year there, but don’t think for a minute they don’t covet flying out of Florida. We have all the cache and we have an existing market, and market is the most important ingredient. On the negative side, we have weather. If we do fly 365 days a year, we have to dodge weather.

Our strategy is to develop multiple Florida spaceports to form a space network. We can bus passengers from location to location, increasing the number of flights possible on any given day. If they go up out of Jacksonville but are coming back down when there’s a weather factor, we can bring them down in Ocala or Miami-Dade or at Kennedy Space Center.

Space tourism initially will be billed as an adventure ride, truly an experience to fly to the edge of space and be able to look at our planet from a different perspective. Initial flights will be somewhat expensive, but costs will drop rapidly. We can open the door to more and more providers of these services, and eventually we can use the international space station. People will see the value of using space to drive some kind of business application. Whether that’s growth of new materials, exploration of biomedical advances or using the fact that space is high up for applications of observing on the ground, all of these things produce opportunities to make money.

FT: Let’s talk about some of the initiatives Space Florida is taking to address the future workforce. What are some of the trends you’re seeing in businesses that are joining the aerospace industry?
FD: There is probably no part more important to our future well-being than continuing to innovate. We need to fuel the industry with well-placed investments in research and development, but especially in the workforce of tomorrow in science, technology and research.

Space is a powerful motivator and catalyst for getting kids interested in science and technology. We are looking at the growth plan for 2020 and doing some planning to determine how many qualified engineers and space business entrepreneurs we may need and we’ll look at the pipeline from university level down to K-4 through 12 and what we can do to provide our educational system with support. We aren’t necessarily going to do the education, but we can act as a catalyst.

FT: What might that look like?
FD: Identifying curricula for space systems engineering, setting up a virtual university for U.S. space graduates, taking the best of each university’s tools and linking them together, providing a range of academies and internships in space education for high school and college students. We’re already doing a lot of this, and we want to go even further. We intend to use the technology kids use. In the future, you’ll see our website using blogging, Twitter and opportunities for teachers to access curriculum materials, those kinds of things. We’ll try to stimulate school participation in a space-related contest.

FT: What does 2010 hold for Space Florida?
FD: I hope we can see a robust, healthy space industry in the state that is viewed as a major economic contributor. It will be diversified, contributing well-being back to the state in all kinds of economic sectors — agriculture, tourism, aerospace, manufacturing, research and development, education. We want to make Florida the place to do space business.

I want us to be both strategic and fast, agile on our feet and also open and inclusive and listening a lot. I want us to measure our performance and be held accountable. If we can operate that way, we will serve the people of the state very well and achieve the goal.