Virginia Economic Review

Maj. Gen. Ted Mercer is the new CEO and executive director of Virginia Space, the owner and operator of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), collocated at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Beth Macy is a three-time New York Times-bestselling author. She is the author of “Factory Man,” “Truevine,” and “Dopesick,” books that tell separate stories, but all stories through which the challenges, issues, prospects, and hopes of rural America are studied in different ways.

Food and beverage processors operate in an industry where even the most successful companies depend on low margins and economies of scale. That means even the smallest advantage can be a differentiating factor when locating a new facility.

Peter Beck is CEO, CTO, and founder of Rocket Lab, a private space company with commercial launch sites in New Zealand and Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Virginia's Surging Craft Beverage Industry Virginia's first brush with alcoholic beverage production came in 1620, when English settler George Thorpe distilled the first batch of corn whiskey in what would become the United States at the Jamestown settlement near Williamsburg.

Dale Nash is CEO and executive director of Virginia Space, the owner and operator of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), at Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore.