Space Florida working to bring more aerospace jobs to the state

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Space Florida CEO Frank DiBello says they’re working to attract more companies to Florida that are supporting the growing space economy.

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The fourth mission of the year lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast Wednesday morning when SpaceX launched a GPS Satellite into orbit for the U.S. military. It was one of the 86 to 92 government and commercial launches expected to take flight before the end of the year.

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“If you look at Florida’s performance last year as a space port system, there were some 1,623 payloads that went to space, accomplishing a delivery of over 1.3 million pounds of useful payload to orbit,” DiBello explained. “That’s more than double the year before.”

During a recent quarterly update that highlighted the creation of some 6,000 aerospace jobs involving 15 companies last year, DiBello emphasized the need to look aggressively to the future.

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“This decade, we expect to see a real emergence of a low-earth orbit economy, and Florida wants to be the ground node and the global leader in enabling that,” DiBello said.

He adds that Space Florida’s aspirations are not limited to the Space Coast.

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“30 to 40 percent of the projects being here in the aerospace triangle between Melbourne, Orlando, and Daytona, and the rest- 60 percent- being outside,” DiBello said.

In the past decade, Space Florida has also invested more than $2.7 billion in aerospace infrastructure.

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