Here’s something that you don’t hear every day: An aerospace company is looking to open a new manufacturing facility in Rhode Island. That’s great news, and a fitting reminder that the Ocean State does have much to offer.

Kelly Space & Technology of San Bernardino, Calif., which specializes in using technology designed for defense and aerospace programs and bringing them down to earth, is looking for a 20,000-to-30,000-square-foot building somewhere in the state. It hopes to employ 50 people building 15-foot armored boats, serving police or military needs for tough boats that can operate in very shallow water.

Part of the lure is Rhode Island’s boat-building know-how and its proximity to defense contractors. The state’s Business Innovation Factory, a nonprofit company that seeks to promote innovative companies, has also helped to promote the state, as has an important KST employee, a retired member of Navy special forces who is from Rhode Island.

The state should work hard to make sure that the company can find its building and get going with boatbuilding. Manufacturing jobs tend to be high-paying and help to encourage further economic activity throughout the region. Service-sector jobs (with the exception of such professions as medicine, the law and accounting) generally pay poorly.

It makes sense that Rhode Island’s natural advantages as a maritime location would be part of its economic strength. That’s something that the state should do much more to exploit — by fully realizing its potential for port activity, both in Providence and at Quonset Point, instead of surrendering these vital resources to condo-mania (looking ever sillier these days) and yet more ugly, sprawl-inducing big-box stores surrounded by windswept parking lots.

The General Assembly can also contribute to Rhode Island’s desperately needed economic renaissance by reinventing state government: The state should finally learn to live within its means, instead of spending at a far faster rate than incomes can grow; make taxes competitive with those of its neighbors; and reform schools to produce much better-educated graduates who can compete in the world economy. That would send a signal, far and wide, that the Ocean State is a great place to do business.

Let’s turn this state around.