MIDLAND, Texas — More space development is coming to Midland International. As part of a recent deal with the Midland Development Corporation, the Air and Space Port will be bringing in at least $78 million worth of assets from Starfighters International along with 23 new jobs.
Those assets include F-104 fighters that travel at speeds in the 1,400 mile per hour range.
The organization is focused on research and development for space, commercial and defense operations, with optimism for their future in the Tall City.
“If they don’t see it, they’re going to hear it," said Mike Smith, VP of Operations for Starfighters International.
"You’ll hear fighters flying over head quite a bit," added Rick Svetkoff, CEO and president of Starfighters International.
Sustained Mach 2 aircrafts are coming to Midland International in 2025 to take flight.
“Midland will be our point of launch and from there with these assets, especially our group two asset, we can touch any of these other spaceports un-refueled, do the mission at hand and return to our home base of Midland Space Port to be able to put it on the map as the number one and primary, first-class spaceport that we know it will be," Smith said.
Starfighters will operate out of a new MDC-owned hangar at the Midland Space Port once it’s built.
For some of MDC’s perspective, Executive Director Sara Harris explained.
“This really fits into the MDC’s strategy for bringing in additional aerospace, aeronautics and defense capability into Midland to help diversify the economy," Harris said.
Pilot and spaceflight training is another piece to the puzzle.
The possibilities are so high that the sky is not the limit, as Svetkoff shared.
“We think we have a significant space length with regards to our capabilities of putting small rockets into low earth orbit, and that’s one of our basic promises besides the hypersonic operations – we want to be able to put small nanosats in low earth orbit," Svetkoff said.
As Starfighters expands operations from Florida to include Midland as well, airspace and a centralized location are big reasons why.
“A lot of the airspace on the coasts for flights and launches are becoming more and more limited and congested, so bringing some of that activity to Texas can help not only Midland but also potentially nationally," Harris said.
Svetkoff and Smith both noted that they are looking to also have an engine shop in Midland to service, maintain and perform maintenance checks on their aircraft.
Starfighters is hoping to start some operations in temporary hangars as early as the first quarter of 2025.