Spaceport bid wins big for Brevard firm

TITUSVILLE -- Kevin Brown had a hunch. The co-founder of Titusville's Command and Control Technologies Corp. believed that of the 25 proposals his company recently had sent out, the "most outstanding" had been delivered to Spaceport Florida, operators of commercial launch facilities at Cape Canaveral.

He may be right. CCT has just been given the nod for a $300,000 contract to develop communication systems at Spaceport's launch facility. "We handle Spaceport's systems analysis and development and launch automation," explains Brown. "I guess you could say, informally, we handle the 3-2-1 blastoff."

The core of the product being installed dates to Brown's years at McDonnell Douglas, where he and co-workers Rodney Davis and Pete Williams worked on a communications system slotted for commercial use. But, says Davis, now CCT's chief technology officer, McDonnell Douglas chose not to pursue commercial sale of the system, so he and Brown, along with current CCT President Williams, set out on their own, obtaining a license to refine and sell the system.

Although the business has yet to turn a profit, it has chalked up growth. Just last month, the company brought its 22 employees -- mostly space industry veterans and experienced computer programmers -- into a new 4,000-square-foot facility at the Spaceport Florida Office Park in Titusville.

And the company has scored some notable contracts, among them, a safety system designed for a launch site at Kodiak Island in Alaska. "We were able to install that system for less than a million," Davis says. "I know equivalent systems by the government would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars."

Spaceport plans to leverage these same cost-saving principles toward the upgrade of its launch facility, the better to accommodate a wider variety of commercial launches. "CCT's launch control system is key to achieving this goal," says Mike Dunkel, Spaceport's director of launch operations.

In fact, when finished, CCT's system will place all the facilities under an automated control system, the first completely automated system on the eastern range. "You can operate the complex with less personnel," says Davis. "The focus on automation is really about reducing costs."

Right now, the cost of a launch runs into the tens of millions of dollars. Brown is aggressively optimistic about shaving those costs. "Instead of $50 million, now it will be $1 million or even $500,000."

There's ample demand. The International Space Business Council estimates the space industry will be an $81 billion commercial enterprise by 2005, in part because of demand for satellites that can handle direct-to-home television, Internet access via satellite and broadband. Based on those numbers, Brown has another hunch. "If we can book four or five of our most likely prospects," he says, "CCT will reach profitability, or at least break even, by year's end."