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

You are absolutely correct,

[m93]

I tried putting one in my town on SimCity, and it did nothing but cause problems.

non-orbital

[close_wait]

For the Nth time: in response to all the inevitable "far cheaper than NASA" posts; this is not an orbital launch - it just goes up to the edge of space, then straight down again. And getting into orbit isn't just going that "little bit extra"; a spacecraft in low earth orbit has about 15 times the potential + kinetic energy of a spacecraft that is at the same height but is just at the top of a vertical up/down loop.

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:Good for Business?

[AnswerIs42]

I lived in Las Cruces, NM for a few years. So let me put it this way...

noise pollution : No one is going to notice.. well, no HUMAN is going to notice. Between TorC (as everyone calls is) and Las Cruces.. there is a whole lot of NOTHING. Just miles and miles and miles of desert. Well, there are a couple of very small communities if you stay next to the interstate.

traffic problems : Non issue there is hardly any traffic now.. the road would be a little busier because peopel would have to live in TorC or Las Cruces that is a plus for both cities.

money that the populace argues would be better spent elsewhere : HAH! I take it you have never seen the area... Go 4 minutes outside the city limits of Las Cruces and you are IN the third world country within the USA. This will pump millions of MUCH NEEDED money into the area.

They have been waiting 10+ years for this. It is nice to see it finally happening. One section of Las Cruces even split off a few years back (~ '96-'97).. became incorperated and called temselves "spaceport City" because they were dead sure that a spaceport would be built by '99. By late '98 and early '99 they were out of money (they had to make a lot of improvements to fit the terms of becoming a city) and the residents dumped the idea and voted to become a 'burb of Las Cruces again and forget the whole incorperation thing.