Rep. Haridopolos: “You can’t be number one on Earth unless you’re number one in space. And so, we are meeting that challenge. We also put an additional $10 billion in the big bill that we passed last July because we know that investment in NASA and the overall space industry is a winner … we’re seeing public-private partnerships like never before … In our local high schools, we’re creating programs so that students can graduate high school, earning top dollars and making not just a good job, but a career in the future.”

Michael Calabrese: “[T]he U.S. is leading the world by far, particularly in the area that’s most important—which is LEO satellite connectivity, which is just taking over—whether it’s Wi-Fi to airlines or Enterprise IoT or filling in the gaps in home and business broadband … Another huge area which we should talk a bit about is direct-to-cell, direct-to-device connectivity that can give you mobile coverage on your mobile devices, like your smartphone, anywhere on Earth. So, we’re leading.”

Kristian Stout: “I think we’re living in a convergence moment … LEO broadband is sort of the missing piece for universal coverage in a lot of use cases … if you think about somebody out in the Everglades or in a fishing village in the Keys that can now get 100-megabit service because they have access to LEO, it’s pretty impressive.”

Michael Calabrese: “People increasingly will want to be connected at all times, whether it’s on a remote road, out in parks, rural areas or deep into the farm fields—and satellite is going to be critical for that, particularly, mobile satellite connectivity.”

Anne Conroy-Baiter: “We’re a high-tech corridor, and one-in-twelve households has access problems. So, when we think about connectedness, it’s not just rural. It is pockets within our urban areas also that we need to think about very, very carefully. And LEO can be part of that, especially as we live in an emergency area with hurricanes … LEOs are part of that solution when something like that happens.”

Kristian Stout: “When you have LEOs being able to provide service to rural and other remote locations, the benefits are not just you can go online and watch TV, right? It’s that connectivity provides things like telemedicine, remote education …”

Anne Conroy-Baiter: “The economic impact statewide is about $8.2 billion for the state of Florida. And then locally, the investments are significant. SpaceX, $1.8 billion in capital investment; about 600 new high-wage jobs; Blue Origin, $2.3 billion; Lockheed, $140 million; Kuiper, $120 million, with a lot of high-level wages … When you think of space now, it’s not just the engineers, it’s not just the owners. It is economic development … It’s everything from trades on up to astronauts, so the economic impact is significant.”  

Kristian Stout: “I think the economic impact is pretty tangible. Launch operations, satellite manufacturing, supply chains, ground station infrastructure, and then downstream broadband and service economy are all creating a huge amount of economic activity in Florida, a huge amount of jobs, so it’s just been a really important thing.”

Michael Calabrese: “The Working Group ended up recommending more of a technology-neutral approach to use LEO connectivity where it’s appropriate, as a broadband solution, which is going to be primarily in high-cost and low-density places, and I think as LEO constellations proliferate somewhat more than today, certainly, this will probably be more of a global impact.”

Kristian Stout: “If we don’t take the baby steps of figuring out how to get our satellite policy right, how to get our space launch policy right, we never get to the point where, in 100 years, we can look back and say, ‘Wow, look what we did.’”