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The sheriff, who grew up in Florida watching launches, wants a new generation to be able to experience the energy, excitement and feelings of patriotism that comes from watching a U.S. launch with astronauts.
Although crowd sizes varied, a high-profile space shuttle launch could attract a half million visitors to the Space Coast. Local tourism officials think next week's launch will bring in no more than 200,000 spectators.
With airline passenger traffic drastically down and nearby Orlando theme parks closed because of the pandemic, "we're not going to be getting the out-of-state traffic we may have gotten during the shuttle era," said Peter Cranis, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism.
"The environment is different with Covid and people now reemerging from stay-at-home orders," Cranis said. "There are going to be a number of people who are hesitant."
The Space Coast's tourism business is down by about 40 per cent for the year, and that could cost the area $1 billion, he said.
"A launch like this after a big long weekend could really give us a shot in the arm," Cranis said.
Local hoteliers are looking forward to the influx of visitors after two bad months. Tom Williamson, who is general manager of two hotels on the Space Coast, each with 150 rooms or more, said one hotel was closed and the other only had 15% occupancy in April. He expects both hotels to be at or near capacity on the night of the launch.
"We're glad to seem some signs of life," Williamson said.
Steven Giraldo works as a technical consultant for a software company in St. Petersburg, Florida, but he has a side gig with some space-buff friends offering charter boat tours for watching launches. For next week's SpaceX launch, he had booked around 150 people from as far away as Australia for $75 a head on a fleet of boats. He ended up scrapping those plans.
"It would take too much logistical effort to see if everyone is wearing a mask, making sure no one has a fever, and how to you social distance on a boat?" Giraldo said.
Instead, he plans to watch the launch with seven other friends, some from Arizona and Indiana, in a boat on the Banana River.
"This was going to be our biggest event. The historical significance of it created a lot of buzz," Giraldo said. "But I just don't know how we could have done it."
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