GROUP AIMS FOR A PLACE IN SPACE CONSORTIUM BOOSTS CALIFORNIA'S PROFILE.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A government consortium that includes the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster will oversee studies on how to make room in already-busy U.S. skies for a new generation of reusable spacecraft, state officials announced Wednesday.

Gov. Gray Davis announced Wednesday a $1 million grant to a consortium headed by the California Space and Technology Alliance to study air space requirements for reusable launch vehicles.

The studies will focus on the Harper's Dry Lake area, about 15 miles east of Boron, California's candidate as the launch site for a proposed reusable spaceship called VentureStar being developed by Lockheed Martin.

``We can put California ahead of the pack in the reusable launch vehicle race to space,'' Davis said. ``As the RLV market develops, this contract will mean that California will be well positioned to compete by pioneering airspace safety criteria for those preferred RLV launch and recovery sites throughout the state.''

The consortium overseeing the studies is composed of the CSTA, the counties of San Bernardino and Kern, the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, and the Western Commercial Space Center, a Central California organization that promotes private investment in space operations.

The consortium's work will include looking at the reliability of future reusable spacecraft, developing safety recommendations for Federal Aviation Administration licensing of launch and recovery operations, and making recommendations on insurance liability issues.

``These studies will better position the California site for FAA licensing,'' said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, who is also a board member of the Western Commercial Space Center.

Lockheed Martin is developing VentureStar to meet the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's call for a reusable spaceship that will dramatically lower the cost of getting payloads in space from $10,000 a pound to less than $1,000 a pound. NASA wants to start the construction of a new reusable spaceship by 2005.

The United States now launches rockets over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, because they drop spent rocket engines. The new reusable spacecraft are proposed to fly into space and return in one piece.

The X-33, an experimental rocket plane designed to test technologies for VentureStar, has run into delays, most recently a two-year setback caused by problems in building its fuel tanks. Lockheed Martin is hoping to begin flight testing the X-33 in 2003.