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Spaceport America Gets FAA License

Posted by kdawson on from the fly-the-friendly-spaces dept.

DynaSoar writes "Spaceport America received an early and double holiday gift this week: first, the expected (positive) FAA environmental impact report, and second, the hoped-for but not immediately expected 'launch site operator's license.' With this license, and with the previously accomplished creation of a tax district, two of three pieces are in place as required by the New Mexico legislature to receive its funding package. The third, a lease with a space services tenant to use the facility, may come this week also, in the form of a contract with Virgin Galactic. While timing is impossible to predict, the contract is a virtual certainty. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority fully expects it, and so has projected late 2010 for completion of hangar and terminal facilities. Virgin Galactic also seems confident, as they have already screened and submitted their first 100 customers (called the Virgin Galactic Founders) to their contracted medical and training supervisor. They are busy screening their second 100 'spaceflight participants' (NASA and RKA having decided that only those who can tack 'career' on the front of it deserve to be called 'astronauts')."

5 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Missed Opportunity... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...to name it after Robert Heinlein.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Re:what's next... by Tastecicles · · Score: 4, Funny

    Homeland Genuine Advantage?

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  3. Re:What will the media call them? by Goffee71 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hopefully, self-loading freight. The same thing the aviation industry calls passengers.

    --
    If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
  4. I don't beleive it! by retech · · Score: 4, Funny

    Until it gets a duty free shop... it's just a meaningless landing strip.

  5. Re:World's most expensive joyrides. by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ironically you would be travelling the most distance in your life and end not going anywhere.

    Wasn't it Robert Heinlein who said that once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere? In any event, getting into orbit makes it faster to reach any other point on Earth than with traditional jet aircraft. In his 1996 novel Firestar , the first volume of a future history on the development of private space travel, Michael Flynn foresaw FedEx being one of the first patrons of spaceports, so that it could deliver urgent parcels faster. That was always an unreasonable expectation, and with the economic downturn it's even less likely, but perhaps other needs for getting into orbit to get elsewhere will arise.