Hawaii new state Office of Aerospace Development is revving up for serious business.
Five companies already want to launch space tours from here.
And money is committed to build a lunar training site on the Big Island.
This little rover was making its way over rocks before the Sojourner began climbing around on Mars.
“They have to be tested someplace,” says planetary scientist G. Jeffrey Talyor, of the University of Hawaii.
That someplace was Kilauea Volcano.
“The little rover has stereo vision,” Taylor explains.
Taylor was driving the rover remotely from as near as Volcanoes Observatory and from as far as Texas.
“That test was very successful and we did in a two modes, too. A Mars mode where there was an enormous time delay where it takes up to 40 minutes to get a signal back from Mars depending on where Mars is, and the Moon, where there was a 2 second delay built in,” Taylor told KHON2 News.
Now with missions to the Moon and Mars on NASA’s agenda, astronauts need a large, out of this world looking place to train.
Once again, the Big Island's terrain is considered a natural choice. But we've got more than geography to offer.
“An intellectual infrastructure,” Taylor explains. “It's a very important resource that we have here. Now we have another one and that's state support.”
The state is supporting robotics training, because robots will be doing much of the work setting up and maintaining a Lunar or Mars base.
And there’s support for space travel tourism, with planes that take off like jets but fire rockets at 30,000 feet.
“The short term plan is to allow tourists to take off from Honolulu and return to Honolulu, while getting a very interesting view of the planet from space,” says aerospace office director Jim Crisafulli.
The mid 20-Teens are the target for the Big Island lunar training base. High end space tours could lift off from Hawaii much earlier, as soon as 2009, says Crisafulli.
Hawaii engineering students are building small satellites to launch from Kauai's Pacific Missile Range. There was another successful military test from there just Friday.
Hawaii's space efforts are growing.