Space Florida CEO Rob Long introduces U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody at the Space Florida headquarters in Merritt Island, Fla., on Friday, July 11, 2025. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel via TNS)
MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. (Tribune News Service) — The nation’s spaceports can now take advantage of tax-free bonds for the first time after Trump signed the “Big, Beautiful Bill” last week, and the Space Coast looks to benefit.
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody on Friday detailed what it means for Florida from the headquarters of Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority.
“This will apply to all spaceports, but we know that this one is the busiest and the most important,” she said of the nearby Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
“After we got this passed, we have already heard from private business entities that want to get in, that want to help, that want to be a part of the growth right here at space on the Space Coast.”
The state officially has three designated spaceports. KSC and CCSFS make up one known as Cape Canaveral Spaceport, while in nearby Titusville is the Space Coast Regional Airport and Spaceport and in Jacksonville is the Cecil Spaceport. The state also has potential future spaceports from the Panhandle to the Keys.
A bipartisan effort in both bodies of Congress was able to insert to tax-free bond allowance into the bill, giving cities and states better options to help fund spaceport infrastructure without having to rely on federal funding.
“The passage of this policy marks a major moment, I would argue, for how we view and treat space in America,” said Space Florida CEO Rob Long. “By making spaceport bonds tax-exempt, spaceports are finally and officially on equal footing with airports, seaports and other modes of transportation.”
He says the provision unlocks long-term investment tools that could help finance things such as roads and buildings that could then attract customers. It’s the sort of approach that could bring in big movers such as SpaceX, which right now is in the midst of a $1.8 billion project to construct support infrastructure for its massive Starship rocket.
“Our goal has always been to reduce barriers for spaceport finance and infrastructure. Period, end of story,” Long said. “But just as we fund the development of airports and seaports that serve both public and private users, spaceports are shared assets that support national security, commercial activity, exploration, innovation and, of course, workforce development.”
He called them the trade ports for the future, and access to tax-exempt bonds can reduce costs and allow groups like Space Florida to meet demands sooner.
“This new policy gives us a powerful tool … but it should also enable a new wave of investment in communities across the state and across the country, wherever interested parties are ready to develop space transportation infrastructure,” he said.
That’s where the state can help lead the way, said Greg Autry, the University of Central Florida’s Space Czar with the school’s College of Business.
“The politicians here in Florida actually cared about space,” he said. “I tried to get a meeting with a senator from California, or even their staff as a professor at University of Southern California, to talk about space. It was not going to happen because they did not care.”
But he has always found Florida’s state and federal elected officials ready to listen.
“We’re going to bring in private capital that, as noted, is going to be good for the rest of the country, whether they like it or not,” he said. “But what will be amazing is, it’s going to be good for the world.”
Autry echoed Long and Moody in citing the specter of competition with China.
“I kind of was raised in the ‘Star Trek’ generation, and for me, it’s so important that the American values of individual dignity and liberty are what we carry to the stars,” he said. “The outcome of that space race isn’t just our pride, it is the future of the human race.”
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