Sen. Begich Sees More Launches in KLC’s Future

Jay Barrett/KMXT
Last week when Alaska Senator Mark Begich was on APRN’s Talk of Alaska, he suggested Kodiak’s rocket launch facility could see increased use in the future. He said with private launches on the increase, the KLC might be well-placed to take advantage of that:
“Kodiak one piece in the sense of a missile testing site, which will continue to probably expand, to be very frank with you, because there are private missile issues in the sense of launches, satellite launches that they want to utilize that facility for, because it has commercial value," Begich said. "You just saw Space-X, which is a private company just launched another successful, at this point, satellite and payload to the space station. That’s the kind of thing I think Kodiak gets into because there’s a lot of commercial activity we can benefit from and its great jobs.”

He said there are concerns regarding continued military launches from Kodiak, because of budget-cutting in Washington – which he supports:
“The big concern we’re starting to hear is, okay, you’re going to deal with all these budget cuts, but people want to take the Defense Department kind of off the table. Well, that’s unacceptable. Everyone has to be at the table," he said. "This problem we’re dealing with, this $16-trillion debt didn’t happen over night, didn’t happen over Democrats or Republicans, it’s everybody. So we’ve got to deal with this, and it means everything has to be at the table.”

Begich and the other legislators return to Washington next month, though whether a lame duck Congress can deal with the budget issues before an end-of-year deadline remains to be seen.