Virgin Galactic to Build Space Port in New Mexico

aapold writes "Virgin Galactic today announced plans to build a $225 million space port in southern New Mexico. Richard Branson will meet with governor Bill Richardson Wednesday to unveil the plans. Virgin Galactic is the company leveraging Spaceship One which, as reported by Slashdot, claimed the Ansari X prize for commercial space flight."

Comments

Re:Exciting times

[binaryDigit]

and the "real" exploration of space can begin.

I think you meant to say "the real exploitation of space can begin". Think high velocity spacecraft junk is a problem now, wait till you have disposable camera wrappers and discarded "Welcome to Space!" flyers zooming around up there.

Re:Careful there....

[tpgp]

Remember, the CEOs of tech companies failed to constrain costs in the late 1990s, and we know what happened to them. Be very careful in spending. Consider whether this port is absolutly necesssary.

Two points:

1) They have a practical source of income - with the first two million allready accounted for

2) "Tech companies" did not fail to constrain costs in the late 1990s, internet startups failed to have viable business plans. There is a big difference.

Re:non-orbital

[ajpr]

I think what they mean is that it is cheaper than an equivalent NASA attempt. NASA doesn't do sub-orbital launches, and therefore any similar launch by NASA would cost a lot more in terms of $ and safety. To get to orbit you can't use the hybrid engines that SpaceShipOne has, there's just not enough kick per unit mass. And the Shuttle only manages to crawl into space because of its solid rocket boosters, that massive tank in between the SRBs (liquid H2/O2 mix) contributes a small % to the overall thrust.

The technology for sub-orbital flights obviously has been around for a long time. Yet the costs involved for even sub-orbital launches have always been high due them being entirely governmental companies. The X-Prize was setup to find out the cheapest way to get the ordinary person into space, whereas the state space programs have always been about pushing the boundaries of human exploration. The cheapest way is to only go as far as the edge of space to save massively on the thrust and energy requirements. The savings that this makes can then be offset by using a less effective fuel (hybrid), but that has the advantage of being a lot safer. The hybrid engines use fuels that generally are easy to store safely (non of this cryogenic nonsense like the shuttle) and also can be switched off in the event of a malfunction (SRBs once lit burn all the way to the tip).

People will still have to pay $20 million to the russians to go into space for a few days, so there is still going to be a large gap between those that go sub-orbital and the few that can afford to pay for orbital space access.

Re:Exciting times

[Somegeek]

Right now, we have neither the ability to cause significant pollution, nor the capability to avoid it, so it's doubly moot.

Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.

some links:

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office : http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
picture of damage to the shuttle front window:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/sts7crack.jpg
picture of a panel that was left in orbit for over 5 years and then brought back for examination:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/ldefpanel.jpg