No doubt Florida’s medical marijuana industry is a fast grower, during 2020 nearly 3,000 new Floridians per week sought a medical marijuana card. Despite the medical marijuana industry growing like a weed in Florida, its growth is still nowhere near as high as the growth on Florida’s Space Coast.
Last year, there were a record 31 space launches from Florida’s Space Coast. Led by SpaceX, news of new launches which once were novelties, became commonplace. Based on the growth this week it’s literally becoming a weekly occurrence. There are currently 53 scheduled space missions from Florida’s Space Coast in 2021. That’s 71% year over year growth. Pretty impressive growth for an industry that’s over 60 years old.
There are numerous factors driving it, none the least of which is Elon Musk’s desire to push the envelope to grow SpaceX missions as quickly as possible and the recent creation of the Space Force prioritizing new government defense contracts on related projects. But what’s specifically allowing for this growth is the development of autonomous flight safety systems. Autopilot has been around for decades for commercial aircraft. The recent perfecting of it by SpaceX has changed the game.
Prior to the creation of the autonomous space flight systems, the quickest NASA scientists and engineers could manually setup the specs for another flight was three days. Now they can support multiple launches per day. You’re going to be seeing and hearing a lot more “Lift Off” from the Cape. It’s the space program that’s driving Florida’s fastest growing industry.
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