BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 20, 2025
Voters in the Washington County town of Steuben will decide on March 11 whether to ban commercial rocket launches, after bluShift Aerospace approached local officials a few years ago to see if they might be willing to have the company base some of its operations there. The company wants to build small rockets, which would use environmentally friendly fuel it has developed, to launch satellites into orbits above the earth’s north and south poles. The relatively sparsely developed coastline in Washington County, and the shoreline’s southern exposure to the sea, are well-suited for the company’s plans. But the vote in March could bar the company from either building rockets in Steuben or launching them off the town’s coastline.