Edhat Staff
The Central Coast’s Regional Economic Action Coalition (REACH) held their Ideas + Action Summit at the Ritz Carlton Bacara last week.
The event brought together the Central Coast community and business leaders to hear from speakers, network with regional leaders, and connect on the innovations shaping the future of the region.
Over 300 attendees joined to take part in a seven segment presentation with the featured speaker being Dee Dee Myers, the Chief Economic Advisor to Governor Newsom and Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz).
The Space Innovation section explored the opportunities and role the Central Coast plays in the global space race with a panel including Felicia Casciano, Senior Manager of Launch Operations at SpaceX; Col. Bryan Titus, Operations Vice Commander at Vandenberg Space Launch Delta 30; Joshua Brost of Relativity Space; and Senior Advisor to GO-Biz, Kaina Pereira.
“We’ve gone from a time when we might have a $1 billion satellite that would be launched into orbit out of Vandenberg to now, today, where we have dozens and dozens of communications satellites that are being launched, smaller, cheaper satellites, thousands of them are in orbit today and many, many more in the pipeline that are creating opportunities for us to have cell service anywhere in the world,” said Josh Boswell, REACH Vice President of Policy and Economic Development.
Col. Titus stated the community should expect to see a lot more launches and service providers as Vandenberg has a lot of land and they’re actively trying to bring in more companies.
Casciano from SpaceX stated they’ve acquired a new production facility and a second launch pad to keep up with the increased launches as we should expect near weekly launches this year.
Brost from Relativity Space addressed the need to speed up the permitting process as getting their 3D printed rocket approved in California took almost a year longer than the East Coast.
With funding going towards the improvement of Vandenberg Space Force Base to keep up with development, the state is excited about the increase of jobs it will bring to the area.
GO-Biz senior advisor Pereira stated California will continue to invest in Vandenberg as it’s one of the fastest-growing markets and is a good driver to bring jobs to the area.
REACH states Vandenberg powers 16,000 jobs and an annual economic impact of $4.5 billion in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, a number that is projected to grow to more than $6 billion by 2030 as the base’s military and commercial mission expands.
