Things To Do In SW Florida

A sustainable home on Millionaire’s Row in Dr. Phillips doesn’t come along often, so it didn’t surprise the listing agents that an offer came in quickly.

“It has solar panels, a septic tank, wells, and is energy efficient. The owners came from California, and we know that sustainability is pretty strong there. They brought their lifestyle to Florida,” said Carol Medeiros, who is co-listing the 7,776-square-foot home with Flavia Bazzon, both are with Premier Sotheby’s International Realty.

Those owners have decided to downsize and are listing the property for $7.5 million. They have a pending contract and are still accepting back-up offers, GrowthSpotter reports.

JWB Architects designed the house, and McClosky Homes completed construction on the six-bedroom and eight-bathroom house in 2022.

The home in southwest Orange County sits on 3.39 acres and has 120 feet of frontage with a dock on Pocket Lake, with access to the Butler Chain of Lakes.

“[The sellers] bought the land with an older house back in 2019. They tore down the house that used to be there and decided to build a brand new one from scratch,” Medeiros told GrowthSpotter. read more

SpaceX is set to lend a hand once more providing launch services for its competitors as a Falcon 9 rocket is set to take up a Northrop Grumman spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The Cygnus spacecraft on the NG-20 mission loaded with more than 8,200 pounds of supplies and science equipment will be the first resupply launch of the year for the orbiting ISS. It’s set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 12:07 p.m. A backup launch option falls to Thursday at 11:18 a.m.

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 95% chance for good launch conditions, which falls to 90% if delayed to Thursday.

The Falcon 9’s first-stage booster is making its 10th flight and will make a recovery landing back on land at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1, which means its sonic boom might be heard along the Space Coast and other parts of Central Florida.

Among the cargo are more than 20 science payloads including a 3D metal printing investigation, an artificial retina experiment, optical fiber production project, and a pair of robotic arms to investigate space surgery, according to the ISS National Lab. read more

Osceola County’s semiconductor manufacturing hub NeoCity received a $15 million award from the National Science Foundation on Monday, bringing its total to more than a half-billion dollars in funding over the last 18 months.

The award comes from the NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines program, which was funded by the CHIPS and Science Act and aims to establish technology hubs across the country. The award of $15 million across two years is for a coalition that includes Osceola County, the nano-electronics design firm imec, the Orlando Economic Partnership and others.

NeoCity, the county’s vehicle to diversify its economy of agriculture and tourism, continues to seek tenants for its over 500-acre technology campus. Currently, the campus is home to BRIDG, a nonprofit research and development company, which focuses on the semiconductor industry, and SkyWater Technology, the only U.S.-owned and U.S.-based semiconductor foundry.

The $15 million award follows closely NeoCity’s latest award from the Department of Defense. In November, the DOD awarded Osceola County and its partners $120 million. read more

TALLAHASSEE — With rocket launches in 2024 expected to top a record set last year, Space Florida is seeking more money from lawmakers and backing an expansion of spaceport designations.

Florida hosted 72 orbital launches last year. Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez, who chairs the agency’s board of directors, said launches from Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center represented 68% of the orbital flights from the U.S. in 2023. The state anticipates about 120 launches this year.

“So, a huge uptick in cadence,” Nunez said during a Space Florida board meeting last week. The Sunday night launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center was the sixth from Florida this year.

The attention on increased numbers of launches — there were 57 in 2022, 31 in 2021, 30 in 2020 and 16 in 2019 — comes as Space Florida has requested its first bump in state funding in about a decade. It is seeking a $5 million increase to its $12.5 million operating budget.

Space Florida President and CEO Rob Long said during the Thursday board meeting that the aerospace sector in Florida has grown 40% in the past decade. He said the funding request is mainly to increase staff, “to help us with the flow of deals that are constantly coming in.” read more

Pinball is a nostalgic arcade game played all over the world. But the standard design of most machines makes it difficult, if not impossible, for people with mobility issues to get in on the fun.

A group of Colorado entrepreneurs wants to change that.

Six friends have invented a controller that can be hooked into a pinball machine to make the game more accessible to people with disabilities, injuries or other physical challenges. Their small hexagonal-shaped device features three round buttons on one side, which a player can use to launch the ball and control the flippers, instead of using the buttons on the machine itself.

Their startup, called Inclusive GameWerks, has produced around 50 controllers since launching roughly a year ago. They’re in use at a handful of Colorado breweries, as well as at several medical facilities, including Children’s Hospital Colorado; some pinball enthusiasts even use them on their personal machines at home.

The six founders — Zack Christofferson, Alysha Christofferson, Joe Haenn, Erin Jacobsen, Dean Edmundson and Cheryl Edmundson — all have ties to Colorado’s craft beer industry, so it’s only fitting that they came up with the idea over beers. read more