Some of the requested land is believed to be owned by Florida, which lays claim to about 56,000 acres of the 140,000 acres that comprise the Kennedy Space Center and the surrounding Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The federal government was allowed use of the land for the national space program, with the caveat that it would revert back to the state if it was no longer needed for NASA’s purposes.

NASA never developed the Shiloh site.

Space Florida already has an agreement with NASA to operate one of the three space shuttle processing hangars.

DiBello said cost estimates to develop a new launch site at Shiloh were not yet available. Though Space Florida is, in part, a special municipal district, with powers to tax and sell bonds, the agency is not looking at levying taxes for spaceport development, DiBello said.

“Right now we hope that we could keep SpaceX here, but there are others that will be coming into the marketplace, I’m convinced,” he said.