Florida: For rent: 15,000-foot runway. Aircraft hangar included. Affordable. Historic. Scenic Florida location.
That's how a classified advertisement might read if NASA advertised its plan to make some money on the long air strip normally used by space shuttles.
As the shuttle program shuffles to its close in 2010, the pristine runway will be used less and less. No reason it should sit empty - especially with commercial space flight about to take off.
"We've invited companies to test drive the shuttle landing facility," said Jim Ball, the NASA official who is spearheading private business ventures at Kennedy. "The key No. 1 thing we wish to demonstrate is that the Kennedy Space Center is willing to support missions other than space."
The space agency already has sought proposals, and under one deal being negotiated, landing fees would likely be slightly higher than the $300 to $700 per flight charged at regular airports.
The space center hosted its first private venture last month - the takeoff of adventurer Steve Fossett in Virgin Atlantic's experimental plane, which set a flight distance record.
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NASA charged nearly $5,000 for use of the runway, hangar, fuel, equipment and airfield services for that one-time deal.
Future private flights will be scheduled around the remaining 17 shuttle missions.
The shuttle landing strip never got the full use it was built for in the 1970s. NASA had predicted then that the shuttles would fly anywhere from 12 to 50 times a year, but the most flights the space agency got in a single year was nine in 1985.
After the shuttle's retirement, the next-generation space vehicle will return to Earth by parachute.
In the past, NASA's nine other space centers have invited outsiders from academia or other government agencies to use their facilities. But none has offered anything as high-profile as the Kennedy landing strip, which millions have seen during televised shuttle landings.
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