MOJAVE, California (May 15, 2012) Mojave Air & Space Port, the world’s premiere civilian flight test center, announced the appointment of Karina Drees to Director of Business Development. In the newly formed role, Drees will provide strategic direction for economic development and marketing initiatives, while working on tenant expansion and retention.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MOJAVE, California (May 15, 2012) Mojave Air & Space Port, the world’s premiere civilian flight test center, announced the appointment of Karina Drees to Director of Business Development. In the newly formed role, Drees will provide strategic direction for economic development and marketing initiatives, while working on tenant expansion and retention.

Drees brings more than 12 years of experience in strategy and business development. She has held management positions for growing technology companies ranging in size from startups to large public companies. Most recently, she was a member of the strategy and positioning team for SRA International, a large defense contractor in Fairfax, VA.

“Karina will be a great addition to the our leadership team,” said Stuart Witt, CEO. “She is an accomplished business development executive with a genuine passion for the unique activities that go on here in Mojave. She will be a strong asset as we expand our aerospace business.

Drees has a BS from Arizona State University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she ran the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Following MIT, Drees attended the International Space University’s Summer Session Program in Beijing, China. She is a board member of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and a judge for the MIT Global Challenge. In addition to her entrepreneurial activities, Drees serves as an SBIR proposal reviewer and panelist for the National Science Foundation.

In 2007, Witt and Drees collaborated to develop an “access to space” action plan for commercial operations of the next generation of space transportation vehicles from Mojave.

#####

About Mojave Air & Space Port

The world’s premiere civilian flight test center is operated by the East Kern Airport District.  Strategically located 90 miles north of Los Angeles in Kern County, California, America’s first inland spaceport is home to a growing number of companies engaged in aerospace and high technology research and development.

PALO ALTO, California (February 27, 2012) The man who manages the nation’s first commercial spaceport called on state lawmakers Monday to help him keep the emerging commercial space industry in California.

Stuart Witt, CEO of the East Kern Airport District, which manages the Mojave Air and Space Port, said immediate action is [...]]]> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PALO ALTO, California (February 27, 2012) The man who manages the nation’s first commercial spaceport called on state lawmakers Monday to help him keep the emerging commercial space industry in California.

Stuart Witt, CEO of the East Kern Airport District, which manages the Mojave Air and Space Port, said immediate action is needed to battle efforts by governors in several states to lure the new industry to their states.

Speaking at the NextGen Suborbital Research Conference in Palo Alto on Monday, Witt warned that “Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and other states, with the support of their Governors, legislators and business communities, are visiting aerospace businesses at the Mojave Air and Space Port in an effort to recruit them and their highly-skilled jobs to their states.”

“These states are serious about stealing jobs, revenue, and businesses from California while our state does nothing to stop them,” Witt added. “Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who successfully lured Virgin Galactic to headquarter at his state’s spaceport, told me on several occasions that ‘Your state makes my job easy!’”

“California, we have a problem,” Witt said. ““We are first in flight test, but we are in last place on the list of business-friendly states. Many of the young, innovative companies in this growing industry of commercial space launch are based in California, especially at Mojave Air & Space Port in Kern County. We want to keep them.”

“To do that, California must compete.”

“In Mojave, we have a thriving community of aerospace and high-technology companies attracted only by our local incentives, wide open spaces, and pioneer spirit,” Witt said. “Today we call on our State representatives and Governor Brown to take one small step to encourage our growing commercial space industry to keep innovating and doing business in California.”

The former Navy Top Gun pilot said California lawmakers need to enact legislation to support the emerging commercial space industry.

Witt said California should match incentives available in competing states, including:
Legislation to limit liability as this new industry develops, “Zero G Zero Tax” zones to provide tax incentives for investing in companies involved in space-related activities, tax credits for aerospace job creation, cash incentives, taxpayer-financed infrastructure, and loans to attract and retain this industry.

“Florida, Texas and Virginia have already enacted legislation to encourage the booming business that got its start at Mojave; Colorado and New Mexico will soon follow,” Witt told the meeting of space industry leaders.

“We need a state commitment to attract aerospace to California rather than letting it continue to erode as it has for the last 30 years,” he said.

#####

Contact:
Stuart O. Witt, CEO
Mojave Air & Space Port
Mojave, California
Stuart@MojaveAirport.com

News and Commentary from Stuart O. Witt, CEO and General Manager, Mojave Air & Space Port

2011 was a transformational year here in Mojave. The first privately funded, purpose-built facility to build spaceships was completed in Mojave. That’s a big deal.

Next door the announcement that Paul G. Allen and [...]]]>

News and Commentary from Stuart O. Witt, CEO and General Manager, Mojave Air & Space Port

2011 was a transformational year here in Mojave. The first privately funded, purpose-built facility to build spaceships was completed in Mojave. That’s a big deal.

Next door the announcement that Paul G. Allen and Stratolaunch will now be constructing two facilities to construct a carrier aircraft, as a critical component of a new space system, will also be built in 2012. So our Taxiway B project, which was designed 11 years ago and constructed seven years ago, now has two showcase tenants. We’re very pleased to have them in Mojave and appreciate their business.

In 2011 we also constructed a photovoltaic tracking system, using concentrated Fresnel lenses to concentrate the Sun’s energy on very small chips, powering the Administration building and others at the airport. We chose a forward leaning concentrated PV system to capture the enormous amount of solar energy falling on Mojave, and put it to our long-term use. It sends a powerful message to our new tenants, and the rest of the world, that we are a totally innovative organization looking at any way to improve efficiencies and capitalize on technology.

We also improved our primary runway. This primary runway can now handle the largest aircraft flying in the world, and that’s significant for a General Aviation airport. It’s also significant that that same runway can hold an aircraft the size of what Mr. Allen plans to produce under Stratolaunch.

For the last few years in the development of our rail yard, which we’ve used to support the wind industry and other specialty freight hauling needs, we’ve realized a considerable amount of un-budgeted revenue. That revenue has been used to enhance our entire facility, the refurbishment of many old World War II facilities that now have a new life. All of those facilities are filled.

We continue to upgrade older buildings. We will continue that in 2012, hiring local labor from the local work force. The long-term goal is to completely facelift the entire Mojave Air and Space Port to meet the needs of the future.

In 2011 we began the process of designing a new rocket test facility on the east side of the airport that would require the movement of water, power, sewer and natural gas under our primary runway, which in itself will now open thousands of acres for development on the east side.

Many of the space tenants at Mojave – Masten Space Systems, XCOR Aerospace, Firestar, BonNova and others – have been testing rocket motors quietly, if that’s possible.

In an amazing way, when you look at the totality of rocket tests worldwide, more rockets have been tested in Mojave than the rest of the world combined in the last decade. Today nine rocket tests will be conducted at Mojave, by one company, Masten. Nowhere else on Earth is that happening today.

Mojave has had a long term attachment to western Europe. Test pilots from western Europe have come to Mojave for several decades, to train and practice their skills, bring projects that are European-based over to Mojave where they have a place to test. This last year we took that to a new level. I worked with representatives of a company in the Netherlands known as Space Exedition Curaçao, and joined them in Curaçao to do an assessment of needs and assessment of operations on how they could operate suborbital spaceflights from the island of Curaçao.

We also worked with Spaceport Sweden in the Swedish Lapland in a place called Kiruna, which is actually a place very much like Mojave, a northern mining community in a very dry climate that happens to be very cold. It’s very interesting that both locations have been in the aerospace business for over 60 years. Kiruna, Sweden’s focus has been in space where Mojave’s has been in the aero. And now Mojave is getting into the space and Kiruna is branching out into the aero, for flights through the Northern Lights, and now they want to do suborbital spaceflights in Kiruna. So we signed a historic agreement to partner on projects.

Furthermore we’re looking at similar agreements with organizations from Spain and Belgium in 2012.

Through these trips and through these agreements we meet a whole new host of people around the world, and we all share common desires, and that is to actually exponentially expand human spaceflight. And we need to do that across borders. We need to do that by collaboration. This is an exciting time and we are very thankful to be at the center of it here in Mojave.

At a very local level, one thing that several of our tenants have identified as a critical need in Mojave is revitalization of the town of Mojave. So we have partnered now on starting an initiative with the Chamber of Commerce to begin a revitalization plan, no different than what the community did in Tehachapi and just made a remarkable difference in the lifestyle in Tehachapi. It helps so many ways. It helps with recruitment of the talent and workforce required to carry out your mission. It helps with retaining those people by providing a livable lifestyle in their own community.

People like and want to work green. Not everybody wants to drive a car to work. Many would like to ride a bicycle. That lifestyle is what the younger work force demands, and that’s what we intend to deliver.

As we look to the past and then reflect on what’s possible in the future, we can’t ignore the accomplishments of the designer Burt Rutan and his brother Dick the pilot, who designed Voyager. That was a remarkable accomplishment and the record stands today as the first un-refueled nonstop flight to circumnavigate the globe 25 years ago today. Fascinating accomplishment, and the legacy of that accomplishment is alive and well in Mojave today.

Looking forward to 2012, people want to know my view of what the future holds, and what’s possible. Since 2004, the last suborbital flights that carried humans and were conducted from Mojave, I’ve predicted that 2012 would be the next year. I still think 2012 will be the next exciting round of manned suborbital development flights from Mojave.

If we are successful, several companies developing these systems will then offer these systems to extend around the United States and hopefully around the world. If our government can find relief on ITAR, which is currently holding back an entire industry from a market that’s out there in the world that wants access to our minds, services and capabilities. Read that as Products. Humans made this rule. Humans can undo this rule and open an entire world market to the products coming out of Mojave and other places around the United States.

When I traveled around the world this year and met with people from Europe, long-standing customers with Mojave and developing new European customers with Mojave, people all say the same thing: What we offer here is actually quite simple, and they say, “So American.” But frankly it’s been lost on many Americans. What we offer is permission. We give people permission to dream, to develop and to test and hopefully find breakthroughs. We will not lose the focus on our primary core mission of giving people permission.

Sincerely,

Stuart O. Witt

NASA Dryden and Mojave Air & Space Port hosted by Spaceport Sweden in Swedish Lapland

News Release December 6, 2011

Just one month after Mojave Air and Space Port and Spaceport Sweden signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MOU), Sweden hosted executives, [...]]]> Spaceport Sweden Hosts Space Industry Summit on Collaboration and Innovation

NASA Dryden and Mojave Air & Space Port hosted by Spaceport Sweden in Swedish Lapland

News Release December 6, 2011

Just one month after Mojave Air and Space Port and Spaceport Sweden signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MOU), Sweden hosted executives, researchers, students and political representatives from the Swedish space industry at the Swedish Institute for Space Physics in Kiruna (Swedish Lapland 200 KM north of the Arctic Circle) for the National Swedish Space Summit.

Mr. David McBride, NASA Dryden Center Director and Mr. Stuart Witt, CEO of Mojave Air and Space Port were keynote speakers on the topics of markets, collaboration and innovation in the new space industry at the event hosted by Ms. Karin Nilsdotter, CEO of Spaceport Sweden.

For many years, NASA Dryden has conducted northern latitude atmospheric research flights from Kiruna in conjunction with the Esrange high altitude balloon and sounding rocket range just 20 minute drive from Kiruna. As Mr. McBride commented, “Northern Sweden is a hub of near space atmospheric research along with being a prime location for conducting sounding rocket flight experiments up to 800 KM along with providing NASA with a northern latitude tracking station for polar orbit missions and the space station and shuttle.”

Dryden has operated its ER2 and DC8 research craft from Kiruna Airport and as Mr. McBride stated, “Kiruna is good business for Dryden and we hope to continue this in the near future with expanded operations.”

Mojave Air and Space Port CEO Stuart Witt noted, “The Aerospace Valley of California has a long history of flight research and European collaboration in the valley is simply very good business. The National Test Pilot School operates SAAB Aircraft and trains Scandinavian Test Pilots each year, as do many European countries. It is very important that Mr. McBride, myself and all aerospace leaders in the Aerospace Valley work to expand collaboration with previous long standing clients, this is a critical part of our mission and specifically our jobs.”

This was Mr. Witt’s second visit to Swedish Lapland this year. As Mr. Witt stated, with the significant investment from Europe, specifically Virgin Galactic, attendees at the National Test Pilot School long and short courses, European filming and other aerospace activity, the Aerospace Valley will continue to focus on Europe as a source of future aerospace research and flight development and testing.

Witt also noted, “It is simply amazing the impact Ms Nilsdotter has had on our industry in such a short time. Her detailed focus on America’s ITAR regulation and how it is limiting American business from expanding to Europe has been priceless. It is simply astounding how regulation in America is stifling expanded markets around the globe. Frankly, it is only hurting American business as Ms. Nilsdotter has pointed out. The world will find countries and firms willing to supply space components to a thirsty world, but Europe desires access to American markets and vendors. Congress must take up this onerous regulatory environment and quickly if we are to have any role in new space. We have agreements in place, but regulation is severely limiting export of our minds and products which impacts jobs at home.”

Ms. Nilsdotter noted that the only way the new space industry will find traction is to collaborate and innovate across borders for the betterment of humanity. Her goal is to create and entire industry complete with fashion, technology, training and maintain a keen focus on STEM education worldwide.

Contact:
Karin Nilsdotter, Karin@spaceportsweden.com
Stuart Witt, Stuart@MojaveAirport.com
David McBride, david.d.mcbride@nasa.gov

Mojave Air & Space Port and Spaceport Sweden building bridge across borders

An agreement with the aim to mobilize, stimulate and facilitate the growth of the commercial suborbital human spaceflight industry across borders at Kiruna, Sweden, and Mojave, California, was signed on Friday 21 October 2011 in San Francisco by [...]]]>

With the Oakland Bay bridge behind them, Stuart Witt, CEO of the East Kern Airport District, at left, and Spaceport Sweden CEO Karin Nilsdotter hold an agreement that aims to mobilize, stimulate and facilitate the growth of the commercial suborbital human spaceflight industry across borders at spaceport Sweden in Kiruna, Sweden, and at the Mojave Air and Space Port at Mojave, California. Contributed

Mojave Air & Space Port and Spaceport Sweden building bridge across borders

An agreement with the aim to mobilize, stimulate and facilitate the growth of the commercial suborbital human spaceflight industry across borders at Kiruna, Sweden, and Mojave, California, was signed on Friday 21 October 2011 in San Francisco by Mojave Air and Space Port CEO Stuart Witt and Spaceport Sweden CEO Karin Nilsdotter.

Mojave Air and Space Port, owned by the East Kern Airport District, is California’s premier location and R&D center for the new commercial man rated space activity being America’s first commercially licensed spaceport, where Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 and numerous firms are currently developing suborbital space vehicles, subsystems and engines.

Spaceport Sweden is a pioneering initiative to establish space tourism in Europe and Sweden with the vision to become a world leading spaceport and hub for commercial human spaceflights and cross-industry innovation. Located in Kiruna, Swedish Lapland, and Europe’s premier space city since 1957, Spaceport Sweden offers unique world-class experiences through the northern lights and under the midnight sun, further supplying launch infrastructure, R&D facilities and high-tech expertise to commercial space operators.

Ms Nilsdotter said “the aim of the MOU is to broaden Sweden’s efforts by expanding Kiruna’s long history in exploratory atmospheric research using sounding rockets and high altitude balloons by adding human suborbital spaceflights and further establishing a hotspot where minds and industries will meet to share ideas and create innovative products and services providing world-class excitement, entertainment and education using on space as the platform”.

Jointly, Spaceport Sweden and Mojave Air and Space Port will engage in cross-border projects to involve evaluating and testing spaceport systems, methods, and processes, and developing joint marketing and sponsorship of events aimed at strengthening the role of commercial spaceports for space travel, education and economic growth.

“We plan to work together to develop a framework that will encourage and facilitate cooperative activity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education and space travel and seek further to identify, develop and craft a competition to retire a critical element of humanity’s manned space exploration,” Nilsdotter said.

Mr Witt said the agreement is the result of a year long effort between the two organizations including trips to Kiruna and Stockholm, Sweden, Washington DC and Mojave, California. Witt was visited by a Swedish delegation last fall and has made two visits to Sweden this year.

Ms Nilsdotter addressed the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in New Mexico earlier in the week and called for “a review of America’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations to enable global growth in the commercial space market while opening the world market to American minds and products.”

“This is an historic agreement between two pioneering communities,” Witt said. “Mojave and Kiruna are places that develop, share and encourage big ideas, foster a spirit of innovation, and are blessed with a wealth of talented people. We are both looking forward to this effort to expand this exciting new industry.”

Contacts:
Stuart Witt, CEO Mojave Air & Space Port
Mobile: 661 824 8417, Email: stuart@mojaveairport.com

Karin Nilsdotter, CEO, Spaceport Sweden
Mobile: +46 (0) 70 2268801, Email karin@spaceportsweden.com

To go and unveil the world’s first human commercial spacecraft even made my kids very jealous today.
- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California

The space ship flew like a bird and the crew got [...]]]> There’s just always something new and exciting. You don’t ever have a boring day in Mojave.
- Terry Palmer, Protoflight

To go and unveil the world’s first human commercial spacecraft even made my kids very jealous today.
- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California

The space ship flew like a bird and the crew got out with big smiles on their face. Absolutely delighted.
- Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic

What kid growing up drawing spaceships on his folder doesn’t want to have a job like this?
- Jeff Greason, XCOR Aerospace

I’d never ridden in a rocket before and I highly recommend it for everybody. The ride is smooth and exciting and oh my gosh you go up high in a hurry.
- Aleta Jackson, XCOR Aerospace

Hi everyone, Stuart Witt, General Manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port. I want to introduce you to unrestricted dream space, right here in Mojave.
- Stuart Witt, CEO and GM

If you’ve got an idea and you want to try something, come up here and we’ll help you. We’ll give you a venue, we’ll figure out a place even if it’s just a little shack someplace to start your business.
- Dick Rutan, EKAD Director

I’m just gonna build my own rocketship and we’re gonna go.
- Dave Masten, Masten Space Systems

Why did Orville and Wilbur go to Kitty Hawk? They went for three reasons. Freedom from encroachment by the press, freedom from industrial espionage and a steady breeze. The same things exist at Mojave today.
- Stuart Witt

There’s no other major meccas of rocket powered airplanes that I know of, besides this whole area here, Mojave and Edwards right next door. And the reason is because it’s such a wonderful natural area for testing rocket planes.
- Mark Street, XCOR Aerospace

It’s the middle of nowhere, nobody else wants to be here, so we do.
- Dave Masten

The flying weather is great.
- Mark Street

The incredible helpful attitude of the people here in Mojave, specifically the airport management and directors, who get it, who understand what we’re about in developing these new technologies.
- Rick Searfoss, XCOR Aerospace

You would not believe the wild ideas that walk in this office. And we don’t look at them as wild ideas. We actually take some internal pride in hosting people who are willing to try. There are people who look at that Roton and see it as a failed project. But I don’t. I look at the number of companies that grew out of that and became thriving companies, and basically became the foundation of a new industry.
- Stuart Witt

XCOR was founded in 1999. All four of the founders had worked together at another entrepreneurial space company, The Rotary Rocket Company, that was based in Mojave. It’s been a rockin’ ride and we’re not done yet.
- Jeff Greason

There are many many other companies on this facility and they gravitate to Mojave.
- Rick Searfoss

You come here and you find a collection of like-minded people focused on common goals.
- Stuart Witt

Every day you see something strange in the sky here at the Mojave airport. It’s a very very interesting place to do business.
- Duane McNutt, ASB Avionics

The reward of working here at Mojave is being exposed to a great range of aerospace activities, from rocketships to spaceships to civilian aircraft.
- Nigel Speedy, National Test Pilot School

There aren’t many places where you can do this kind of testing.
- Randa Milliron, Interorbital Systems

It’s the world center of odd-looking airplanes that do amazing things.
- Ken Doyle, Firestar

It’s an opportunity that just doesn’t exist in very many other places in the world.
- Nigel Speedy

To be here when Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill flew a homebuilt spaceship built by 34 people, at a time when NASA had 85,000 and couldn’t put an American in space, and we did it from here with a plastic airplane that was built by 34 people. That was pretty neat. To see Dave Masten’s picture on the cover of Aviation Week, and I remember the night before he won, his rocket burnt up sitting on the pad after a flight, and they rebuilt it with volunteers, came out the next day and won a million dollar X Prize. That’s the story people don’t see. And we do. We get to see the passion, we get to know the people that are twisting the wrenches.
- Stuart Witt

This is the only airport that I know of that recognizes the prioritization and importance of research flight testing.
- Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites

Mojave Air & Space Port by and large operates on its own receipts. We don’t get operational funds from anybody. The commerce rolling through Mojave airport and up the mountain is really good business for us. It’s the wind industry. On the rail yard side, we’ve signed a ten-year contract with the rail industry to support the wind industry. That’s not only excellent use of our landholdings and compatible use of our landholdings, but it’s a great revenue source, which enables the airside operation.
- Stuart Witt

We were able to perform nearly 5,000 rocket tests in the last ten years and you project that ahead, that is now a game-changer in the rocket-powered flight industry. Nowhere else on Earth is that happening. I keep telling the world, if we are successful in Mojave, hopefully the world will have many commercial vehicles to fly in space.
- Stuart Witt

Mojave Air and Space Port is the world’s premiere flight test facility. And don’t you forget it.
- Dick Rutan

Special Thanks to ASB Avionics, Dick Rutan, Firestar Technologies, Interorbital Systems, Masten Space Systems, National Test Pilot School, Protoflight, Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, X Prize Foundation

Produced by Robin Snelson and Haley Jackson – Editor, Christopher Angel -Camera, Steven Payne and Chip Proser – Music by Ramón Balcázar

As 2010 winds down and we welcome 2011 it is time to reflect on what was accomplished and what is on our horizon.

With a heavy heart we all will miss Mojave icon, TWA Captain Mike Potter, who passed away [...]]]>
Note: PDF version includes photos courtesy of Bill Deaver.

As 2010 winds down and we welcome 2011 it is time to reflect on what was accomplished and what is on our horizon.

With a heavy heart we all will miss Mojave icon, TWA Captain Mike Potter, who passed away on Thanksgiving Day.

While the balance of the nation and world wrestled with recovery from difficult economic times, along with many businesses at Mojave, many advances were achieved this year which may have only happened in Mojave! Our objective has been to remain locally and nationally relevant to the needs of the nation by supporting the following:

• Masten Space Systems won $1.15 million dollars for their vertical launch rocket development. As if that were not enough, they went on to win a share of the NASA CRuSR program and further developed a re-startable motor.

•Mojave saw the first flight of its 8th space development system. Yes 8th! Seven prior have already flown under rocket power. 2011 may see our 9th and 10th fly under rocket power as well.

• Ground breaking and construction began on a new 68,000 sq ft TSC hangar on SpaceShip Landing Way!

• Major upgrades to our Joint Response capability were realized with the construction of an Emergency Operations Center and a new first of its kind composite structure response vehicle, obtained under a successful FAA 50/50 grant.

• Construction was completed on a major asphalt reconstruction and re-hap project in the General Aviation Hangar west end. This included, in new drainage, electrical underground and water service.

• Our bone yard received its first fence to fence clean up in 40 years!

• The airport District signed a long term contract with Union Pacific for the purpose of unloading specialty cargo from various points around the world in support of the local wind industry.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!!
This action along brought over 40 local jobs to Mojave.
o Crane operators
o Truck drivers
o Heavy equipment operators
o Rail repair crews
o Escort Drivers
o Logistics technicians
o Schedule technicians
o Support personnel

• Numerous successful specialty flight testing events at FTA, NTPS, ASB and BAE.
• XCOR announced development of their new space vehicle development.
• Airport Blvd improvements began.
• Rehab and Paint of 16 facilities on Sabovich Blvd.
• Rehab and fire safe improvements of Building 58.
• Legacy Park received a new stage cover.
• Our maintenance yard received much needed new heavy equipment and a new block wall.
• The airport District signed a new Concentrated Solar PV contract to power Building 58 for the next 20+ years at a fixed rate of power at 7 cents/KW.
• The airport District engaged Hollywood on many new film gigs which delivered many part time jobs to Mojave.
• The airport District accepted delivery of our 8th hybrid vehicle which rounds out our 10 year goal of replacing a fleet of inefficient vehicles with hybrids.
• ITT installed a ADSB to our control tower as a test facility for the FAA’s new aircraft tracking system.
• The airport District upgraded our tower with a new RADAR display/eye extender.

For a year when the nation was searching for good news we seemed to be basking in one breathtaking event after another. From rocket ships to rail lines to building reconstruction we have seen up close and personal all that is good in America. People all around us are finding new ways to remain relevant to the needs of our nation and community. Everyone involved with our facelift and focus on process improvement should take great pride in positioning the District for the challenges of tomorrow. Just when we get our fill of poor economic news on TV, we are welcoming new and innovative thinking to foster and grow business locally to support our national energy, transportation and aerospace interests.

In 2010 our focus was simple, “begin the slow process of improving our physical facilities and hold on.” In 2011 our focus will be to continue to grow our way out and support all 67 airport tenants in realizing their business objectives!

Hold on, it should prove to be a wild ride.