{"id":18130,"date":"2019-02-22T18:47:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T10:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/firefly-aerospace-gets-a-florida-launch-site\/"},"modified":"2019-02-22T18:47:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T10:47:10","slug":"firefly-aerospace-gets-a-florida-launch-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/firefly-aerospace-gets-a-florida-launch-site\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefly Aerospace gets a Florida launch site"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Firefly
An architectural rendering shows Firefly Aerospace\u2019s future rocket production facility at Exploration Park on Florida\u2019s Space Coast. (Firefly Aerospace Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based launch venture that was lifted out of bankruptcy, says it\u2019s struck a deal with Space Florida to establish business operations at Cape Canaveral Spaceport.<\/p>\n

The terms of the newly executed agreement call for Firefly to build a 150,000-square-foot rocket manufacturing facility at Space Florida\u2019s Exploration Park and set up a launch facility at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Space Launch Complex 20.<\/p>\n

Firefly says it will invest $52 million in the project and bring more than 200 jobs to Florida. Space Florida has agreed to match up to $18.9 million of Firefly\u2019s infrastructure investments via the Florida Department of Transportation Spaceport Improvement Program.<\/p>\n

Other ventures with facilities at Exploration Park include OneWeb Satellites and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirefly Aerospace is proud to be the newest member of the Florida Space Coast family,\u201d Firefly CEO Tom Markusic said today in a news release<\/span>. \u201cOur mass-production manufacturing facility in Exploration Park will enable Firefly to produce 24 Alpha vehicles a year, enabling a launch cadence that will support a rapidly expanding global small-satellite revolution and the commercialization of cislunar space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The venture was founded as Firefly Space Systems in 2014 and conducted its first hot-fire rocket engine test the following year. But when a European investor withdrew support in 2016, in the aftermath of Britain\u2019s Brexit vote to withdraw from the European Union, that sent the venture down the path to bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

The company was reborn as Firefly Aerospace with backing from Noosphere Venture Partners, an investment firm that bought up Firefly\u2019s assets. Pre-launch testing and fabrication have resumed, and Firefly is aiming to conduct its first Alpha launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California by the end of this year.<\/p>\n

Even before its first flight, the venture has secured a place among eight other launch companies on NASA\u2019s list of commercial providers for lunar deliveries, and has a deal with Seattle-based Spaceflight for satellite launch contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe space industry is expected to be fastest-growing segment of the worldwide economy in the coming decades, with analysts predicting a global market of over $1 trillion<\/span> a year by 2040,\u201d Markusic said<\/span>. \u201cFirefly Aerospace is uniquely positioned to be successful in this new economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Firefly doesn\u2019t have the small-launch market all to itself, however. There are plenty of firms aiming to outshine it, ranging from Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab to Relativity Space and Vector Launch.<\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C., some analysts saw clear signs of a coming shakeout on the launch startup scene. \u201cI think it is a 100 percent bubble in the launch sector right now,\u201d said Sunil Nagaraj, founder and managing partner at Ubiquity Ventures.<\/p>\n

If there is a shakeout coming, will Firefly rise above it, or get squashed? The multimillion-dollar deal with Space Florida suggests that, for now at least, it\u2019s on an upward trajectory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An architectural rendering shows Firefly Aerospace\u2019s future rocket production facility at Exploration Park on Florida\u2019s Space Coast. (Firefly Aerospace Illustration) Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based launch venture that was lifted out of bankruptcy, says it\u2019s struck a deal with Space Florida to establish business operations at Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The terms of the newly executed agreement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,443,2361],"class_list":["post-18130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-firefly-aerospace","tag-florida"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}