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One Step Closer To Spaceport America
space_hippy writes "The next step for a project we've previously discussed has now come around: thanks to a sales tax increase it seems as though the residents of Dona Ana county in New Mexico will be playing host to the first American commercial spaceport. From the BBC article: 'Residents in the US state of New Mexico have approved a new tax to build the nation's first commercial spaceport. Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swath of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business. The spaceport is expected to open in 2009, and Virgin Galactic says space flights will cost around $200,000 for a 2.5-hour flight.'"
Commercial space flight may happen and it will only have taken 200,000 people paying an extra .25% sales tax. Think of what we could be done with $500 billion.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I assume this is a sub-orbital flight past the boundary of space like Spaceship 1 took, but doing that would still qualify for my life-goal of "see earth from space". I want to do this before I die. Even if I'm 90 and the flight will probably kill me, I'd sign whatever waivers I needed to and take my chances.
I wonder how 200k compares to the cost of airline flights at the birth of commercial aviation after adjusting for inflation? I'm guessing it's still quite a bit more, but maybe not too far? Either way, the point is that it's only a 1-2 orders of magnitude from where many people would be able to do it, including myself. And that makes me very excited.
The enemies of Democracy are
Think about the jobs that this opens up. Janitors, security guards, secretaries, and the businesses that sell to them, as well as to the travelers who come through. Hotels require waiters, maids, etc. A lot of service level jobs can be found at an airport.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
I consider myself a space enthusiast, but I find it amazing that in a time when initiatives to raise taxes to better fund schools routinely fail, that this one passes. I can only surmise that the economic situation in the area is truly desperate. Sadly, I suspect that Virgin Galactic is getting the better end of the deal. Any increase in jobs is likely to be temporary and primarily associated with construction of the facility. And increased tourism is just a huge guess. I wish them luck, but this is a huge gamble.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Yeah, why would anyone want to attract wealthy tourists to a place whose economy is otherwise completely stagnant?
Those "SciFi fanboys" were the voters, as in residents. But hey, what would they know?
The enemies of Democracy are
Are you aware of how huge the tourism industry (which often makes its best profit margins off the small groups of "international super-rich assholes") is in many, many places throughout the world?
Perhaps they (these New Mexicans) have enough vision to realize that if a major corporation opens a one-of-a-kind (as in, go to space for less than a million dollars) buisness in their backyard, the chance of them getting good-paying (by their current standards, although you'd probably still call it "menial, servile") jobs increases dramatically?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.
Ah, cue the great lie that tax incentives to draw corporations "create" jobs.
Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k, so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
Please help metamoderate.
A few people may eventually make it out there, but at great cost and nothing that can be called "colonization" or "humanity's escape from cataclysm."
Bravo. I think in one sentence you just summed up ~50 years of space "exploration."
The best part of it? The people who have made out like bandits (telecommunications/entertainment companies, defense contractors which "do" everything NASA needs done and built all the satellites lofted into space and the missiles that thankfully haven't been) are liable to be the only ones to do so.
Why? Orbital junk. Pretty soon, we will be trapped by the trash floating around the planet, and the "backup plan" for humanity (ie colonizing other planets) will be impossible.
Right around the same time the environment undergoes rapid, cataclysmic changes...
Please help metamoderate.
It's the American way!
If you had done a tiny bit of research you would ahve found out that:
A) Many companies are looking for more places to launch satalites.
B) Parts of the complex are going to be used for other industry
C) It doesn't take a lot of rich people to maek a profit in putting them into space
D) Company will have space launch for promotional reasons.
E) They will need to attract higher paid people for launch support.
F) They will need more high paid people for IT support
G) Those higher paid people tend spend there money locally
H) It is an investment. They think those items I list(and others) wil pay off over the long run.
You have a lack of imagination, vision, and common sense.
Please get off the internet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Where to start...
From the article you'd think they were refering to the third world. Dona Ana county contains Las Cruces which has New Mexico State University. A very large state school and a pretty good engineering school. I went there. Second White Sands Missle Range is just over the Oragon Mountains (We used to have tailgate parties and watch the pretty lights).
And did I mention Sandia Labs and Los Alamos in the northern part of the state? Microsoft had its first offices in Albuquerque. Anyone remember the Altair 8800? The place is TECH HEAVY. I mean I remember tourning a reactor at one of the labs on a field trip as a freshman in high school. A lot my classmates parents were engineers or physicists.
And don't get me started about "bleak swath of dessert." To know the dessert is to love it.
Spaceport America will be just 200 miles away from the Alien Spaceport (Roswell). Good time to start thinking of moving to NM, what with all that tourist income comming in!
As optimistic as I may be about the prospect of manned space flight, the entire proposition seems a little contrived to me.
The Wright Brothers didn't need an airport to build the first working plane. I'm guessing that what we think of as "airports" and "seaports" today didn't exist for some time after the advent of commercial air and sea travel. Rather, they were probably born of some need to consolidate services and facilities. Right now, there is no need for either with regards to commercial space travel.
For that reason, I think that Branson's space port will emerge as nothing more than a tourist-trap theme park in sunny New Mexico, with a sparsely manned "launch" once every three months. If it ever opens. And the denizens of sunny Dona Ana will stand to gain a bit, but their town will be transformed into a novelty town. Maybe some people want this...? I certainly wouldn't.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
(Did they choose this place because it has a two word name!?)
SLM
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Do we have the technology to do it that easily today? Obviously not.
Will we ever? I don't know, because I can't see the future. If you have, and you know "Those things will not happen, ever.", please, enlighten us as to what will happen?
When the preceding arguement on the other side is "That will never be feasible", and they can't even supply numbers to back that up, what other response is possible?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
"Supporters of the new tax say the spaceport will bring thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in space tourism revenue to the area.
But critics of the tax plan say the money could be better spent on existing county problems. "
Who are these critics, and do they RTFA? Do they mean existing problems like high unemployment and lack of revenue?
Agreed. Lets assume that each of those 200,000 on average earn $20,000/year. Lets also assume that each of them spend all their earnings because poor people can not save money. Then the 0.25% sales tax increase means that the county collects an extra 10 million dollars each year. That money is hardly enough to build and run a normal airport, let alone a highly experimental space airport. There is no way that their projected earnings can make up for those costs.
What else could you do with ten million? You could employ a few hundred teachers, nurses or other public service personnel. Such a project would have much higher chance of being profitable. Not only does it raise the quality of your county's public services, which attracts high income tax payers, it also contributes to your local economy. A few hundred new jobs means a few hundred more that pays income and sales tax all without the risks involved in building a commercial space port.
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Impoverished? I live in Dona Ana county. I wouldn't say the landscape is bleak and I wouldn't say the people are poor. The landscape is desert. White Sands National Monument is 40 miles east and the Organ Mountains have spectacular views. Las Cruces, NM (the second largest city in NM) which is in Dona Ana county has a population of 23,000 students. Maybe when you add them to the 90,000 permanent residents you see the "relatively poor" area of New Mexico.
In short, don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
Everybody here is arguing about whether or not this is feasible, and how the parent company has so much money they should just be funding this themselves. Obviously there's more to the story than what we're seeing here, it would be interesting to find out what the investment prospectus was -- how were the residents of new mexico convinced to vote, by majority for this tax increase.
Since when do americans vote for a tax increase? That's the real story.
ender-iii
Odds are, you're right about the frequency, especially initially. Keep in mind, though, that these "rocket guys" won't just drive in, do their thing, and leave. You'll have full-time employees, stuff to be stored, things manufactured on site, and all the infrastructure to make it happen. Have you looked at the Kennedy space center's org chart? That's a lot of people and there hasn't been a launch for quite awhile.
Don't see anyone here mentioning the thousands who voted AGAINST it, or, for reason of greater priority, lack of interest, or other, didn't vote at all, and yet get stuck with the bill...
My parents live in the county, I went to university there, and travel there occasionally.
Doña Ana county is home to a boom town -- Las Cruces. And unlike places like California and Las Vegas the boom hasn't died out. Hospitals, shopping, roads, banks, and all kinds of other infrastructure are popping up all over.
Las Cruces (the county seat) is about 45 minutes from El Paso, TX. There's a fairly large university there (NMSU) and no shortage of people looking for work.
Best of all -- for a spaceport -- there's land near this infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land, sparsely populated.
It's a great place to build a spaceport.
Get off my lawn.
No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live
That statement assumes that multi-millionaires will spend any remotely-significant amount of their money in town. What is more likely is that they will fly into the spaceport via private jet, stay in luxury accomodations at the spaceport, get blasted into space, land, and fly home via their private jet.
It is extremely likely that Virgin will structure things such that payment for all of this will take place in such a manner that New Mexico and (ironically) the county, will not see a dime in sales tax.
He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
You and I both have little idea if that statement is true, but it's irrelevant nonetheless: my point is that the people of the county in question will most likely be better off if Branson hadn't built the spaceport (in their county), or hadn't received a dime from them.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth. Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
That's an invalid straw man argument.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
"Trickle down" doesn't exist. It's bullshit made up by an actor who played President to justify to poor people why he was handing rich people and corporations tax cuts.
Irregardless, you're also again relying on the completely speculative argument that "if a spaceport is built, it will benefit the county." That seems very dubious, given the scale just tipped $50,000,000 out of their favor, and all Branson has committed to doing is leasing some facilities and land.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
The engineers will built very expensive homes in the nicest places (which is where people are usually already living), close to the spaceport. When Joe Engineer offers a big lump of cash to a hesitant (or greedy) potential seller and the deal closes, guess what happens to the property values for land around where Joe Engineer now lives? It goes up. And guess what happens to property taxes? They go up. My parents have a close friend who is 80 and has lived in my hometown for half her life, working much of it tirelessly as a volunteer- and she can't afford the property taxes on the modest home and small parcel of land she owns, because the valuation by the town has tripled based on sale prices of homes around her and in the rest of the town.
Back to NM...some landlords will cash out, kicking out tenants, who will now be looking for places to live- further bumping up demand for remaining property or rentals. The engineers will not want to live next to run-down houses or trailer homes owned by the locals, and they'll start pushing their towns to "do something" about it; suddenly Joe Trailerpark finds himself slapped with a $100 fine for having his Camaro on cinderblocks and $50 for not mowing his lawn. The restaurants and grocery stores will realize their customers can pay more for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas for that luxury SUV- and because their workers have been priced out of living in/near town, they have to look harder for people to staff the registers, or pay more. Etc.
Please help metamoderate.
So, about 300 people a year are going to turn up for the reverse experience of bungee jumping. And each one of them's going to spend a shitlot of money on tourist products? "New Mexico was so bad I left the planet!" t-shirts? Unless they're planning to sell replica spaceships that actually go into space at $3m per boat, what the hell are they going to do to make tourist money?
"This ain't a trailer. It's a space trailer!"
--- Band: Joey Ultra
and I saw it. At the X Prize Cup. Dona Ana county is really pretty, and there's a lot of support for building Spaceport America there. It's great that they are figuring it out, D. Kent Evans (the county commish) and everyone else deserve a huge pat on the back for this. The area is mostly agricultural, the spaceport (and X Prize, rocket races, etc) promise to bring both tech and service jobs to the area. Suborbital flights are only the beginning, if rocket racing or orbital shots become feasible they can be hosted there as well.
You can read my review of the X Prize Cup event, from a vendor/small biz perspective here:
http://www.postcardstospace.com/xprizecup.html
Anyway, we return you to your regularly scheduled flamewar...
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
For those of you who don't know Southern New Mexico is the birth place of space flight and military expertise in the United States. After World War II many Germen scientist moved here and White Sands Missile Range was born; the biggest land based testing range for missile and rocket technology in the US. New Mexico State University is an engineering power house and lots of engineering students will probably have plenty of opportunities to learn and work with Virgin Galactic while they are attending school . A reason Virgin Galactic is here is because of the rocket/missile expertise that exists in the area. Holloman Air force Base is also in the area where the F-117 is based and the future home of the F/A-22. NASA also has a huge testing facility here. If you want to launch rockets this is the place to do it.
Years ago I visited a camp grounds in Erie PA that was billed as the "First Official UFO Landing Port". Since it was on commercial property and was a "space port", wouldn't it have been the first?
You'd think that "Spaceport America" would be located somewhere in the United States!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
There is already a spaceport in Oklahoma: http://www.tulsatoday.com/archive/SpacePort.html
This won't be the first US commercial spaceport. Mojave Spaceport has been active for several years now. SpaceShip One launched from there.
Rotary Rocket was supposed to launch their SSTO vehicle from Mojave, and built a vertical assembly building and a prototype at Mojave. But they had a weight growth problem and never got beyond low-altitude testing.
You can call it what you want, but that's no more "bribery" than when a car dealership says they'll give me free oil changes for life, if I'll buy a car from them instead of the dealership down the street.
It's called making a better deal than your competition. If you think that's immoral, then by all means, don't do it. But you may find yourself a bit broke.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You could say that the second largest industry in Dona Ana is education. Of the 200,000 people, about 8% were students at NMSU when I went there. A few years back it was second only to MIT in research funding.
Sure, NM is poor. And sparse. With lots of faults. But with NMSU and all the rocket scientists commuting over the Organ Mountains to White Sands, Dona Ana ain't stupid.
And it has the best (and largest) enchiladas, bar none. No contest, go home.
The problem with Mojave is that they are not equipped (nor have the proper airspace) for surface-launched rockets. Keep in mind that Spaceship One was an air launch that started as a conventional airplane take-off. Their license is strictly for air-launched spacecraft that originates at Mojave. I might be mistaken on this point, and if I am please enlighten me.
New Mexico will be different because they are going to be a ground-launch rocket spaceport. In this regard, they are similar to the effort at Virginia and perhaps even Anchorage, Alaska (who is more situated for polar orbits). Cape Canaveral certainly deserves some recognition, although whether the feds will give substantial commercial access is something that can be debated. And Blue Origin's slice of Texas may be something else to consider, but you are stuck with needing a relatively low lattitude if you want space access.
I have no doubt that Mojave will continue to be a primary civilian flight test center, and the legal standard needed to launch experimental air-launched rockets will still be in place for that particular piece of real estate for many years into the future. Its use to launch rockets from the ground, such as the SpaceX Falcon I or something from Armadillo Aerospace does seem dubious.
At the same time I will admit confusion here as Virgin Galatic, the main commercial underwriter here for New Mexico, is using an air launch vehicle that would seem perfect to Mojave. So I don't know if Mojave screwed up here or if there is a bigger issue involved.
There's a limitation to this. Being out in what sounds like the middle of nowhere in a desert, odds are pretty good that access to water is going to be a deciding factor in what property can develop. Having a lot means diddly-squat if there's no access to water. Nobody is going to want a McMansion where they can't take a shower on a regular basis.
So the real trick is:
1. Find nearby 10 acre lots that have a somewhat decent aquifer below. (Unless there's a nearby pipeline supplying freshwater from a remote location. In which case you're going to want the property in range of that.)
2. ???
3. Profit!
Apart from all of the feasibility arguments around here, the real problem with the sales tax subsidy is that they are paying for some fraction of this spaceport (25%?) and NOT OWNING IT!! That amount of investment from any private capital would command ownership and input, and assuming it was successful, RETURNS! The only returns being discussed are the theoretical increases in tax revenue due to tourist spending. Ridiculous, If I'm the county I want my share of the net distributed back to the population as stockholders.
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
You really should consider a political career. I didn't say what you quote, although I grant that it allowed you to gracefully segue into your pious and orthodox rant.
Historically, new technologies have never broken the laws of thermodynamics. Never ever. In order to fulfill these childish dreams of mass space travel, escaping earthly cataclysm, terraforming and colonizing Mars, etc. you need to assume that some currently unsuspected technology can harness vast amounts of energy that in any case are not present on earth, or that the laws of thermodynamics will be broken or bent beyond recognition. It is sappy to believe that "just because we are ignorant today doesn't mean we will remain so tomorrow," or something similar is somehow an acceptable and rational stance. Your belief in the eventual appearance of the mystery technology and its vast implicit energy pool is a magical-religious belief akin to faith in the eventual arrival of a god-like figure and the subsequent salvation of the world in some way. It is ridiculous.
More to the real point, you and your fellow believers are hell-bent in ignoring the real driver of manned space exploration, the Wizard of Oz none of you really want to see. That is the political lobby of the defense industry, in particular the aerospace sector. Manned space exploration is government pork. You should read that last phrase the way "Soylent Green is people!" was recited in the movie, way back when. Manned space exploration is a lie, a swindle, a scam. Stop holding your eyes tightly closed to avoid seeing this reality. It is there, and it is at the root of some terrible other truths that are putting our world in danger. I'm sure I lost you by now, but here is another verdisoylentian tidbit: the War on Terror is also a lie, also pork for the defense industry as well as the energy/petroleum industry. I know, you think that is a bizzare, unfounded, and crazy statement. Well, you have been duly informed. There are very few credible international terrorist groups, most are splinter groups of deranged, powerless fanatics. Occasionaly, they are given both money and professional assistance by intelligence/SpecialOps types (from where? by whom? why? those are the pertinent questions), and they are able to mount truly threatening projects, such as the 9/11 attacks.
Here's a trick: tally up all of the dead and maimed Americans due to international terrorism in the past 10 years, including 9/11. Now tally the same thing for those who have died fighting in Iraq, ostensibly the "front line in the War on Terror." Interesting, eh? Now tally all of the people worldwide who have died at the hands of terrorists in the past 10 years. Do it twice, first excluding those in Iraq, then including them. Then compare that to the number of Iraqi civilians that were killed or maimed by our hand in the first three years of the invasion of Iraq. Use any and all data sources you can find. Oh oh, nasty! Bad dog! Bad!
You have now seen the Wizard, and should be very, very disconcerted. Think about it next summer, as you pump $4/gal gasoline into your car. Think whether this has to do with those who benefit from manned space exploration. Think also about who profits financially from maintaining the belief that we are constantly threatened by terrorists, and that the threat is intimately associated with access to petroleum. Think about "supply and demand." Think.