Texas is planning to make a huge public investment in space

"Further investment will cement Texas as the preeminent location for innovation."

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[mcain6925]

Cool anecdote! Too bad most businesses don’t operate like yours.

When I worked on the budget staff for the Colorado state legislature, there were a couple of years where I poked around the Governor's Office of Economic Development. The way they described it was that they dealt with two kinds of companies. The first group were looking for minimum wage labor, low taxes, and as few regulations as possible. Those they generally brushed off. The second group paid above average wages and were interested in the state's educated workforce, communication and transportation infrastructure, the university system, quality of life issues (examples being hiking to the performing arts center and everything in between) and only at the end of their list were they concerned about taxes and regulation. Those got as much information as they wanted, help scouting locations, etc.

It's been some years now, but my understanding is the first group doesn't bother with Colorado any more now that our state minimum wage is pushing $15/hour. OTOH, we have the second most aerospace workers among states, and easily the most per capita.

 

[mcain6925]

Certain specific Texas educational institutes get oil and gas money, as allocated a long time ago. UT, Texas A&M, etc. The newer lottery and gambling money was supposed to go to support more general education, but the details can be a little obscure.

Long ago, when I was a graduate student in Austin, the way it was explained to me was like this. To get federal land-grant status (and benefits), the state had to cede 1% of the state's area to the university system. That could be little pieces widely distributed or all concentrated in one area. The state ceded a million acres of then-worthless high-plains almost-desert around Midlands/Odessa. Only a few decades later did they discover it was floating on oil.

At some point it was so much money that the legislature made the universities invest the oil revenues, and only spend the income from those investments. While I was in Austin, UT decided to build a new life sciences building. The Regents chose the proposal they liked, and simply wrote a check for it. The University of Texas system has the second largest endowment in the country. The Texas A&M system has the eighth largest. Combined, they're considerably larger than any of the Ivies that are noted for having large endowments.

 

[mcain6925]

Texas is going to have to fight the federal NEPA regime to allow more than 5 Starship launch operations per year from Boca Chica if they want to compete with Florida in the launch sector. Otherwise the Cape will become the center of gravity for Starship operations and assembly.

How much does that change with launch/recovery platforms a few miles offshore?