"The Office of Space Commercialization has been without a permanent director off and on now for two or so years. The SubOrbital Institute has worked very hard over the past several weeks trying to get the Administration to appoint at least an acting director to fill this empty job slot. So we're quite happy and thankful that an acting director has now been appointed," Bahn continued.

The new acting director is Dr. Gary Gravatt. Dr. Gravatt was Deputy Director of DoT/OSC under Secretary Malcolm Baldridge, and has extensive experience throughout the Department of Commerce.

"We believe his experience and history, such as his distinguished service on the Landsat interagency commercialization team, will be vital in rebuilding DoT/OSC," said Ed Wright, Executive Director of the SubOrbital Institute.

The mission of the Office of Space Commercialization is to foster an economic and policy environment that ensures the growth and international competitiveness of the U.S. commercial space industry. It is thus one of the most important points of contact between the emerging suborbital launch services industry and the federal government.

Suborbital flight is a small market of huge strategic and economic importance. The suborbital market exists in the gap between airplanes and orbital spacecraft.

Suborbital vehicles share some characteristics with airplanes, some others with orbital spacecraft, and still others with launch vehicles; but they are also different in many significant ways.

Suborbital spaceflight presents a number of extremely interesting business opportunities with important economic and national security implications, in areas as diverse as imaging, science, and tourism.

"Since this office is so important to our nascent industry," Ed Wright said, "it's imperative that it finally have appointed to run it be a permanent director. That's what the SubOrbital Institute will start to work on next," he stated.

The SubOrbital Institute is also vitally concerned with achieving full staffing for DoT/OSC. "DoT/OSC is currently fully funded and authorized to have a staffing level of three FTEs, but it only has one employee at this time," said Wright.

"The Department of Commerce clearly needs to fix this situation. Unless it is rectified, DoT/OSC simply won't have the manpower to conduct a study on the obstacles to the further development of a suborbital launch services industry, as it has wanted to. This is a study we view as vital," he concluded.

"We're glad DoT/OSC finally has someone at their helm. Now it's time to also get come crew aboard, too," Bahn finished.

Founded in 2002 by several new, entrepreneurial commercial space companies, The SubOrbital Institute's mission is to promote regulatory and legislative initiatives it finds to be important to the promotion of a robust suborbital industry. It is headquartered in Bethesda, MD and may be reached at 301/913-0071.

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