“We stand at a pivotal moment,” Janet Petro told state lawmakers in Tallahassee last fall. The future of one of Florida’s signature assets, what Petro called the “jewel” of America’s space program, was in jeopardy.
Kennedy needs more money, she said. It needs state funding for roads, utilities and facilities to support its surge in space traffic. It needs research dollars to advance the aerospace industry.
Yet Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, hasn’t been particularly willing, Petro said.
Petro’s call to action comes as NASA’s space shuttle launch and landing operations, based on Florida’s Atlantic coast for nearly 60 years, are booming.
Kennedy hosts and manages the agency’s missions, along with an escalating flow of commercial space traffic from companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Launches from the spaceport have more than tripled over the last five years.
As Texas and Alabama vie for space business and close collaboration with NASA, Space Florida’s relationship with the agency is strained by disagreements over funding and control.
Space Florida did not respond to questions about its relationship with NASA.
Gov. Ron DeSantis asked for $17.5 million for Space Florida’s operating budget in the coming fiscal year, plus $5 million to expand wastewater capacity for commercial launch companies and $10 million to boost aerospace startups. But that request is stalled amid lawmakers’ budget negotiations. And it’s still meager compared to the $350 million that Texas has already spent on space projects in recent years.
Petro said she fears that if Florida doesn’t work more closely with NASA, the future of Kennedy and the commercial space industry it helps support is at risk.
That tension raises the stakes for Florida’s place in the future of aerospace, an industry that increasingly lies with states willing to spend the most to woo companies and enhance federal government launch pads.
The friction between Space Florida and NASA hovers over the federal agency’s most ambitious mission in half a century — Artemis II, slated for takeoff next month. The four-person manned flight will orbit the moon to test deep space systems, a step toward long-term lunar and Mars missions.
In an interview last month, Petro likened the Kennedy Space Center and its partner next door, the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, run by the U.S. Department of Defense, to a small town. Together, they comprise the world’s busiest spaceport.
To keep up with a growing slate of launches, that small town needs electric grid capacity, wastewater facilities, roads and bridges. Kennedy has 450 separate agreements with private businesses that operate on its federal property, she said. Seventy percent of its launches are commercial.
She worries Kennedy will have to delay launches because it doesn’t have what it needs to get rockets off the ground efficiently.
“We have no infrastructure funds to build out the support systems for that,” Petro said. “Where could the state help out? With those infrastructure projects.”
NASA’s budget covers only its specific programming, along with its rockets and facilities. It is typically ineligible for federal grants funding roads, bridges and utilities, which are only available to states.
Florida does spend money on roads, buildings, and utilities to support the space industry but is increasingly focused on areas beyond the Space Coast, including in the Panhandle.
The state funnels spending through Space Florida to grow the industry, investing in shared projects and breaks for businesses rather than handing out individual grants.
An example of this approach is Space Florida’s investment in water and sewer lines along a 2-mile former airport runway near Kennedy. The goal? Entice companies to do business at Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility, “a hub for aerospace innovation, exploration research, manufacturing, and testing,” according to the group.
Despite space mission successes and industry growth, NASA and Florida have been on different pages for a while.
Last February, DeSantis and Space Florida’s CEO, Rob Long, beckoned for NASA to relocate its headquarters to the Kennedy Space Center. They pitched the state as a respite from the “bureaucratic hivemind” of Washington.
But by November, Kennedy’s director was ringing alarm bells about the center’s future in Florida.
“The continued success of this national asset is at risk due to fundamental operational challenges, and frankly, a lack of adequate support,” Petro told state lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs, Space and Domestic Security in November.
“The decisions made within this chamber will determine whether Florida remains the undisputed launch pad of America or becomes a footnote in the history of the new Space Age,” she told lawmakers.
Petro stopped short of offering solutions, saying she is not in a position to prescribe state policy. At the end of the day, she said, NASA and Florida have different goals.
Texas, Florida’s chief competitor in the commercial space race, is taking a different approach.
Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is where flight controllers oversee the International Space Station and other space missions, including ones that launch from Florida.
Texas created its Texas Space Commission last year to boost aerospace industry growth with NASA. A marquee project is a $200 million space center with simulated lunar and Martian surfaces for research.
“Texas invests directly in NASA, with NASA,” Petro said.
Florida, meanwhile, invests in Florida.
“We’re not really interested in what I would call cash incentives,” Long, Space Florida’s CEO, told Aerospace America magazine last year. “We are focused on entering into long-term partnerships with companies that are interested in growing over time.”
The state has also talked about coordinating research and development with state universities for months but has little to show for it, Petro said.
“I’ve got to say, I’m really disappointed,” she said.
In Tallahassee, lawmakers have largely balked at her pleas for more formal cooperation and investment with NASA.
Immediately following her presentation last fall, some lawmakers seemed alarmed, including Sen. Tom Wright, R-Port Orange, who heads up the Senate committee overseeing space issues.
“Thank you for the wake-up call,” he told Petro. “We need it. We really do. There are fundamental disconnects.”
Three months later, Wright has not sponsored legislation to address NASA’s concerns, nor has he responded to Times questions about the issues Petro raised.
Another issue fraying NASA and Space Florida’s relationship: who has the right to develop around the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.
Florida says those federal properties, together, constitute a “spaceport territory” that state law directs Space Florida to expand and promote. Last year, Space Florida unveiled a plan to create a “unified spaceport” to connect the Kennedy and Cape Canaveral space centers.
The problem with that is Kennedy and Cape Canaveral sit on federal land that Florida does not control.
At least, that’s what the feds say.
“We are the decision-makers,” Petro said.
Rep. Kim Kendall, R-St. Augustine, wants to clear up the confusion. She proposed a bill delineating what the federal government controls and what Space Florida can develop.
“We have no jurisdiction over the feds, and we don’t need to go down that trail anymore,” she said.
Kendall, a former Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller, said people in the federal government told her and other freshman Florida Republican legislators during a visit to Washington last year that Space Florida spoke on behalf of NASA on Capitol Hill, at times misrepresenting NASA’s mission and positions.
“We are very appreciative of NASA and Space Florida, and we want to make sure we are doing what we need to do,” Kendall said of Florida. “We collaborate and work well together, but each one of us has our own lane.”
State lawmakers have not advanced her bill.
© 2026 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
