Reference
ContentsHow to read this mapThe statutory spaceport systemThe launch coast and the Eastern RangeThe chain off the coastThe engine that changed hands twiceThe state's handThe state designates a research entityAnnounced, and designated: two different thingsNetwork position and what it does not meanHow to read each relationEvidence architecture, open items and sourcesHow to read this map
Florida’s active orbital launch cadence is concentrated on one stretch of the Space Coast. The chain that feeds those launches does not sit on that coast. It runs through satellite and spacecraft plants in Palm Bay and Melbourne, an engine plant in West Palm Beach, a space infrastructure company in Jacksonville, a university consortium with members in seven cities, and statutory spaceport territory in eight counties from the Panhandle to Miami-Dade. This map reads the whole of it as one supply chain and shows where the pieces actually are.
Four things that are not the same
Statutory spaceport territory is a legislative classification of land. It is not a licensed launch site, not a range, not an operating commercial spaceport and not a record of launch activity. Every place on this map carries an entity type that states which of these it is.
| Entity type | What it means | Who creates it |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory territorial designation | Land that s. 331.304 or s. 331.307 names as spaceport territory. | The Florida legislature |
| Federal launch installation or range | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Eglin range complex, Patrick Space Force Base. | The federal government |
| NASA field center and multiuser spaceport | Kennedy Space Center, which hosts commercial tenants alongside the federal program. | NASA |
| Licensed spaceport | A site holding a Federal Aviation Administration launch site or launch and reentry site operator license. | The Federal Aviation Administration |
The inclusion rule
A node appears when a public document establishes both that it exists and that it holds a Florida relationship to the space economy: an operating site, a statutory designation, a launch complex assignment, a contract, a corporate transaction, a program, or a documented supply relationship. A company with no recorded Florida presence is not on the map however large it is. A facility is on the map when a document places it somewhere.
The people rule
People appear only where a public document names them in a role that carries a relationship on this map: a founder, a named executive in a transaction, a center director, a range commander. Seven people are on the map and each carries a person class. No private individual is mapped and no person is added from the owner’s contacts, messages or interviews.
The timeline placement rule
Every node carries two years. The founding year is when the entity itself begins. The Florida space year is when its documented Florida space relationship begins, and the timeline uses it. The two are the same for an entity that begins in Florida for the relationship it represents, such as a launch complex or a spaceport. For a university, a legislature, an agency or a company founded elsewhere, the Florida space year is the year of its first documented Florida space relationship on this map, so the timeline never implies that a relationship is as old as the institution. The basis of every placement is printed on the node page.
Observed, announced and designated are three different things
Every node carries three separate fields. Entity status records whether the thing itself is operating, historic, designated or announced. Project status records whether a named project at that node is announced, under construction or complete. Evidence class records what kind of record supports it. A statutory designation with no project is not an announcement, and it is not filed as one. Places that are both a legal designation and a working installation carry two more fields, statutory status and operational status, so that the legal effect of a designation is never read as the operation of an installation: 8 nodes carry an announced entity status and 4 carry a designated status.
| Evidence class | Nodes | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| publicly verified operating | 59 | A public document records the entity operating at a Florida place at the cutoff. |
| public record entity | 10 | The entity and its Florida site are established from public record; the exact scope of the Florida operation is not carried by a primary document. |
| historic or successor | 13 | The entity no longer operates under that name or in that form, and is on the map because a line runs through it. |
| announced | 8 | A project is announced, funded, approved, under construction or scheduled, and is never written as complete. |
| statutory designation over operating installations | 1 | A statutory name for land whose launch activity sits on the component installations, each of which is its own node. |
| statutory designation without recorded launch activity | 3 | The legislature has designated the land. No active orbital launch operation and no construction program is recorded there at the cutoff. This is not an announcement. |
The lanes
Every node sits in one of nine lanes. The lane is the map’s reading of what the node does in the chain, not a legal or industrial classification.
Hub regions
A node sits in the hub region of its recorded place. Hub regions are a reading of the state at map scale, not administrative boundaries. Headquartered outside Florida holds entities that operate in Florida and keep their headquarters elsewhere. Place not recorded holds only nodes whose Florida place no public source records. A node with a recorded Florida place outside the other regions is never filed there, which is why Tampa Bay and West Central Florida is a hub region on this map.
| Hub region | Nodes | Cross hub endpoints | All endpoints | Cross hub share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Space Coast | 63 | 38 | 218 | 17.4% |
| Orlando | 3 | 2 | 4 | 50.0% |
| Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast | 6 | 7 | 15 | 46.7% |
| Jacksonville and the First Coast | 4 | 3 | 7 | 42.9% |
| Panhandle and the capital | 8 | 11 | 23 | 47.8% |
| South Florida | 2 | 3 | 3 | 100.0% |
| North Central Florida | 3 | 5 | 7 | 71.4% |
| Tampa Bay and West Central Florida | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0% |
| Headquartered outside Florida | 3 | 15 | 15 | 100.0% |
| Place not recorded | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0% |
A cross hub endpoint share computed on two or three endpoints is arithmetic, not a finding. South Florida reaches 100 percent because both of its nodes connect only outward. Read the share beside its denominator in every case.
Confidence
Confidence is derived from the source register rather than assigned by hand. Each node carries the grade its best source supports and prints the basis of that grade. A node is High only when an official source documents the specific Florida claim the node represents. An entity’s general home page documents the entity, not a Florida site, so it carries High only for the entity itself; a site node resting on a parent company page and reference coverage is Medium. At this release 83 nodes are High, 9 are Medium and 2 are Low.
| Tier | What the tier may carry | Entries |
|---|---|---|
| official | Statute, enrolled law, legislative analysis, federal and state agency record, federal license record, public company filing or investor disclosure, and the entity’s own published record of itself. An official source alone can carry a High grade. | 96 |
| press | Reported coverage by a named publication. A press source alone carries a Medium grade; it carries a High grade only beside an official source that supports the same claim. | 21 |
| reference | Encyclopedia and compiled reference. A reference source never carries a High grade on its own and is used only where it is the corroborating source beside an official or press source, or where no primary document is published for a minor attribute. | 29 |
The two Low nodes are Launch Complex 15 and Long Wall, formerly ABL Space Systems. In both cases the disposition of the pad lease after the company left the commercial launch market is not recorded in any published source, and the map says so rather than inferring it.