CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Brevard County’s tourism office isn’t worried about another setback to the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to the International Space Station.
After coming within a couple hours of launching on May 6, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will now wait indefinitely as work continues to repair a helium leak on the new spacecraft that’s already years behind schedule.
The most recent launch date was scheduled for Saturday which got News 6′s James Sparvero wondering how the sudden shift in Memorial Day weekend plans could affected the holiday crowds visiting the beach.
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Peter Cranis, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, said the number of tourists will still be high.
“I think it’s going to work out well because Memorial Day weekend is the kickoff of our summer, and we’re anticipating a very strong summer based on our spring, which we just had our March numbers come in almost as high as our peak of last March,” Cranis said.
Port Canaveral is a big reason why the county’s been collecting more money than ever from tourists.
A new commission meeting Wednesday talked more about how even without the Starliner launch, Space Coast tourism is still booming.
CEO Captain John Murray said since October, 4.5 million people have gone on a cruise.
“You may recall in ‘19, our best year prior to the pandemic, was 4.6 million,” Murray said. “So in seven months this year, we’ve exceeded what we did in 2019 so things are going well.”
Cranis said when Starliner does finally carry astronauts on its historic flight, he expects big crowds.”
“I’ll call it a second bite of the apple when they do have Starliner come in,” he said of summer expectations.
Even with all the delays over the last two weeks, NASA still hasn’t hosted a new press conference so reporters can ask questions about them.
James asked both the astronauts and the mission managers about Starliner’s safety and readiness in his previous stories.
Stick with News 6 and ClickOrlando.com for an update when the next launch attempt will be.
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