The Antelope Valley Press has a self-serving editorial on spaceports. Agenda revealed in last graf:

Right now, there is a serious and dangerous shortage of viable commercial airports. It would be far better to deal with that overwhelming present-day need than to try to compete for space tourism that will become a reality through the good works of Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson.

It’s certainly true that there are more spaceports being planned than are justified by current demand (or constraints of locale), and it’s also true that there’s a hard regulatory road ahead for many of them, given the issues that they’ll have with general aviation (something solvable with a more rational approach by AST). But to think that only Mojave will have a spaceport, and only Burt Rutan and Richard Branson will succeed or are even making any progress is, at the least, disingenuous. This was the line that Burt took in his luncheon speech in LA a couple weeks ago, and Stu Witt (manager of Mojave Airport) said the same thing when I met with him in Mojave last week (no confidences broken here, as far as I know–he’s happy to tell the same thing to anyone who asks).

I expect Burt and Stu to say those things, and I expect the Antelope Valley Press to stenograph them, but Oklahoma has a tenant with funds, developing vehicles, and we don’t know what Jeff Bezos is going to do out in the middle of Armadillo* Scrotum, Texas, where he’s not near either populated areas or military ranges, and may in fact have an easier time getting a site license than some of the more “conventional” choices. In any event, such editorials are to be taken with the prescribed amount of sodium chloride.

[* Update: Sorry, no slight to these guys intended]