Local authorities say Grottaglie is ready and has a lot to offer tourists
After racing down a nearly 4-mile runway, a van carrying members of the airport board stopped on a patch of asphalt infested with tall grass, wildflowers and herbs.
“Ah, look at the smell of that oregano”, said Antonio Maria Vasile.
“That’s wild fennel,” replied his boss, Marco Franchini.
“No, it’s oregano,” Vasile grumbled, as Franchini got out of the van and announced: “We’re here. This is Spaceport.”
Grottaglie, a small medieval town known primarily for its artisanal pottery, is getting ready to take off.
In July, Italian aerospace companies signed a contract with Virgin Galactic to take space tourists who have around US$250 (R$937) to spend on suborbital flights that offer a view of the Earth's curvature and around five minutes of minimum gravity.
Forty-six sites across the country were considered for the honor of serving as the new launch pad. In May, Italy’s transportation ministry decided that Grottaglie, population 35, with its long runway, stable climate and history as a testbed for remotely piloted helicopters and other unmanned craft, would be ideal.
On Monday (30), the Prime Minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, was alongside President Donald Trump at the White House and used the great occasion to talk about “launching, as soon as possible, new planes that, when crossing the atmosphere, will be able to connect Italy and the United States in an hour and a half.”
“No one is laughing anymore,” said Michele Emiliano, president of the region, who was depicted in a caricature floating in space in an oversized astronaut suit.
If all goes according to plan, Virgin's White Knight 2 will carry SpaceShip Two Unity to about 65 feet, where a smaller ship will separate, accelerate and climb 100 miles above sea level to the line. of Kármán, between the Earth's atmosphere and space.
Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin, said 600 people are in line to take off from the original launch pad in New Mexico next year, and about two years later in Italy, although delays, accidents and cancellations have postponed the launch. departure in more than a decade.
Ceramist Salvatore Santoro works in Grottaglie, Italy. (Stephanie Gengotti/The New York Times)
However, this region of Puglia, birthplace of José de Cupertino, the 17th century patron saint of astronauts, for his apparent habit of levitating during a trance state, is hopeful.
It also needs an economic revival. Situated a few kilometers away from Grottaglie, Italy's largest steel plant, ILVA, is a political headache and an environmental disaster that disperses toxic red dust in its surroundings; its closure could eliminate 20 jobs.
So Emiliano, perhaps best known for getting injured while dancing tarantella and waging a costly civil war within his Democratic Party, predicts that Grottaglie will be a kind of “Silicon Valley” of European space, with 40 suborbital flights a year.
Many Italians find the project quixotic. But supporters talk about the possibility of a secondary industry of flight simulators, special research trips, launches of small satellites, academic research and an Italian fleet of special suborbital spacecraft copied from Virgin.
Emiliano is also counting on wealthy visitors who would stay in Puglia's luxury country hotels during training.
“We don’t want, say, rows of umbrellas and beach chairs,” he said. “We want to have high-quality people.”
There are already some pockets in Puglia with a frequency of rich and famous people. Officials at Grottaglie airport, which no longer has commercial flights but welcomes charter flights, have already welcomed the Kennedys, Hollywood filmmakers and Madonna, who landed here in a “golden plane,” said Franchini, who showed a photo of you and Branson on your cell phone, both wearing open-necked white shirts.
“We hit it off right away because of kitesurfing,” he said.
The city's inhabitants hope that even more high-society people will come for the two-and-a-half-hour suborbital flight from Los Angeles to Grottaglie that Emiliano describes. (“I would be very cautious about that,” said Vincenzo Giorgio of Altec, one of Virgin’s Italian partners.)
Emiliano acknowledged that this trip, which reaches a speed of 6g, or six times the acceleration of gravity, could be “a bit stressful” for passengers. But the reduction in flight time would be revolutionary for shipping cargo, although not in the case of Grottaglie's precious ceramics.
“They’re beautiful,” he said, “but there’s no rush.”
What he had in mind were the produce of Puglia. “Have you ever eaten a fresh fig?” he asked. “A fig from Puglia, if it arrives fresh in Los Angeles, can cost 6 to 7 euros (R$ 26 to 31)!”
But not everyone is happy with the idea.
In front of his ceramics store, under a large ceramic sign that reads “Ceramics District,” Giuseppe Santoro said he doubted the project would be approved and that, even if it did, he didn't think the city would benefit economically. of any activity at the airport. “We are in another world,” he said.
Santoro lamented that a deal that received similar attention more than a decade ago, with US company Boeing to make the 787 Dreamliner fuselage in Grottaglie's hangars, had not created the promised tourist boom.
“They brought us this desert,” he said, gesturing toward the empty curving streets.
Other potters in the neighborhood are concerned about rising rents and noise pollution. Some are more willing to give it a chance.
“We hope it happens,” said Enza Fasano, a master potter from the respected Fasano ceramics empire. But she added that the city had a lot of work to do, including improving its housing options. She asked me where I was staying and told me: “Your guesthouse is terrible.”
Her husband, Salvatore Santoro, also said that the city hall should organize tours in the ceramics district. He said that if people were willing to spend $250 on an “exorbital flight, or whatever they call it,” then they “could spend 100 euros on ceramics.”
Local authorities say Grottaglie is ready and has a lot to offer tourists. In addition to ceramics, Grottaglie also produces grapes and mosquito nets, said Vincenzo Quaranta, the town's deputy mayor and former air traffic controller.
He showed his 14th-century castle, containing pottery from the 4th century BC. In a disused convent, he pointed to his favorites in an international ceramics exhibition, which included work by a local artist consisting of ceramic reproductions of cigarette butts, beer bottles, condom wrappers and cotton swabs scattered across the floor.
Mario Bonfrate, the city's top tourism authority, also said that Grottaglie also had tennis courts and culture. He noted that Peter Murphy, an English singer known as the godfather of gothic, would play his only Italian show in the city in August.
Italy still needs to pass legislation that allows suborbital travel. But cooperation with the US Federal Aviation Authority and support from the Italian government encouraged Giorgio, the Altec executive.
He said market research had shown there was a lot of demand and that Grottaglie's departures would be complementary rather than competing with its American cousin. “The outlook would be a little different,” he added. “In New Mexico, the situation is more of a desert.”
This all seems a little weird.
The airport's idle check-in hall, which even has analogue scales for weighing luggage and faded posters of Grottaglie's esteemed ceramics, appears to have stopped in time.
As gusts of wind passed over the roofs of buildings under construction that will become offices for suborbital travel (“It's strange that it's windy today,” said Vasile, director of the airport), Franchini showed an open and renovated hangar and explained how it would house the Virgin spacecraft.
“Close your eyes,” he said, “and imagine.”
Jason Horowitz, mm Grottaglie. Via UOL
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