Spaceport: Arkansas
Take that, Houston and Cape Canaveral
WE LIKE the sound of that. “Spaceport: Arkansas.” Maybe one day it’ll happen. Gov. Asa Hutchinson was joined last week by high muckety-mucks and a prominent venture capitalist to announce recommendations from the Arkansas Council on Future Mobility.
“Future mobility” means simply “transportation of the future.” And by that, we mean The Jetsons.
This stuff entails electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, flying cars, drones, and even rockets. And it’s about time! For at least 20 years folks have been complaining about not seeing flying cars yet, although in the 1970s we were promised that sort of thing by now.
And it just so happens that Arkansas has a national transportation-and-logistics hub in its northwest corner, home to Fortune 500 companies and now a couple of EV manufacturers. And the industry is fed by logistics-driven curriculum at the University of Arkansas.
The governor signed the group into existence in February. The group’s chair is Cyrus Sigari, co-founder of California-based UP Partners, a major investor in mobility tech and a former jet manufacturer among many other endeavors. (Don’t compare résumés with Mr. Sigari.)
One day, he and state officials dare to dream, Arkansas could be recognized as a national hub for this future mobility.
The council’s recommendations include a $250 million Arkansas Innovation Fund to invest in new tech, a new state office dedicated to mobility, an institute for advanced mobility at the UA, a state space authority to initiate efforts to build a spaceport in Arkansas and the appointments of a state director of science and tech and a state chief “futurist,” the latter to study and forecast future industry trends. Now, we could question more government “investment” and creation of yet another government office. But a state chief futurist sounds fantastic.
The council’s plan also calls for the state to recruit native Arkansans working in the tech industry to return home and to boost investment for STEM education in schools. The new tech the council has in mind for Arkansas includes infrastructure for space travel and flying cars, the paper reports.
The state has some builtin advantages—location, location, location—that could help make the dream a reality: already existing logistics prowess, the presence of Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, J.B. Hunt and Tyson, and aerospace defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Dassault, Raytheon and Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Mr. Sigari says advanced mobility represents the new “space economy,” a market expected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2040. The state’s current largest manufacturers are poultry producers—Tyson, Simmons, Peco. And steel is beginning to make a push.
Why not mobility tech? Why not a spaceport? The foundations are in place. And when Arkansas makes up its mind to do something, it can punch well above its weight class.
Decades ago, opportunity presented itself in the form of homegrown Federal Express at Little Rock’s Adams Field. The city and state were unable to grasp it then. It’s not often such opportunities come around, but another appears to be knocking. Arkansas needs to answer this time. Or better yet, open the hangar bay doors.
“This is Spaceport Arkansas. Permission to land.” We definitely like the sound of that.