For the first time in recent memory, backers of Florida's space industry walked away from the two-month legislative session utterly empty-handed.
With NASA already making the first of at least 3,500 layoffs — and as many as 10,000 — at Kennedy Space Center, the Legislature failed to pass a single space-related bill by the end of regular business last week. And lawmakers devoted no new money to averting the economic calamity that will strike when the space shuttle is mothballed.
Part of the problem was a dire economic picture that doomed any new spending. But internal turf fights and controversies over Space Florida, detailed by the Orlando Sentinel, also stalled efforts, officials said.
"There was a lot of talk, but no action," said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, whose bill to create a new space-research institute at Daytona Beach-based Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University died last week.
With NASA already making the first of at least 3,500 layoffs — and as many as 10,000 — at Kennedy Space Center, the Legislature failed to pass a single space-related bill by the end of regular business last week. And lawmakers devoted no new money to averting the economic calamity that will strike when the space shuttle is mothballed.
Part of the problem was a dire economic picture that doomed any new spending. But internal turf fights and controversies over Space Florida, detailed by the Orlando Sentinel, also stalled efforts, officials said.
"There was a lot of talk, but no action," said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, whose bill to create a new space-research institute at Daytona Beach-based Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University died last week.
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