Sixty-four years ago this weekend, on July 4, 1945, scientists launched the first small rocket from this low-lying coastal island, whose tantalizing curve of sandy beach has eroded badly over the years. But Wallops never built the capacity to launch large rockets, and there were proposals to shut the NASA facility down in the early 1990s, when budgets got squeezed.
The new, privately developed Taurus II rocket would be by far the largest ever launched from here and would make Wallops the site, for the first time, of medium-class space launches, which can lift heavier payloads into orbit. As tall as a 13-story building, Taurus II is comparable in size to the Titan II rockets that propelled two-man Gemini capsules into space in the '60s.
When Orbital announced last summer that its remotely controlled cargo ships would fly from Wallops instead of Cape Canaveral, the move rocked Florida officials. They had lobbied hard for months to get the business, hoping to preserve jobs that will be lost when the shuttle program ends.
For the first time, a NASA-related launch connected to manned space flight would be going elsewhere. The Orlando Sentinel editorialized that Florida's "long-standing and lucrative title as the nation's space capital could be stolen," as commercial space ventures ramp up in the Mid-Atlantic and other states, including New Mexico, California and Alaska.
"If you think back over the 50 or 60 years of the space program, it has been the province of the federal government," said Mid-Atlantic Spaceport manager Rick Baldwin. "Now you're seeing that space is becoming the purview of state governments, in this case Maryland and Virginia. That is a solid trend that is taking place."
Insiders say that Mikulski, who chairs the Senate committee that funds NASA, is determined to make Wallops a prime launch site for future missions.
Not long ago, the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport quietly snagged more new business away from Cape Canaveral: the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, planned for takeoff from Wallops as early as May 2012.
The unmanned LADEE satellite, a low-cost spacecraft now in development, will orbit the moon for several months, studying its atmosphere and lunar dust. The $80 million project was originally planned as part of a Cape Canaveral launch in 2011.
Eastern Shore economic development officials hope an aerospace revival at Wallops will generate high-tech jobs and business in the area.
