Virgin Galactic Signs Historic Lease Agreement

RobGoldsmith writes "Governor Bill Richardson today announced that Virgin Galactic has signed a 20-year lease agreement with the State of New Mexico. Virgin Galactic's world headquarters will be established in New Mexico and its operations will be located at New Mexico's Spaceport America, the nation's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. The signing of the lease agreement coincides with the beginning of the test flying program for Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo launch vehicle which got underway this month in Mojave, CA. The WhiteKnightTwo will serve as the mother ship for SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle that will carry commercial astronauts into sub-orbital space from Spaceport America."

Comments

If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[Mad-Bassist]

As more and more people hop on the private space vehicle bandwagon.

I think this makes up for Governor Schwarzenegger tempting Tesla Motors into abandoning their plans to build their first plant in Albuquerque and staying in California. After all, I can't see rocket launches happening in San Francisco!

Re:If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[geckipede]

Reusable SSTO isn't going to develop from continued work on suborbital vehicles like this. They're too small and expensive to use for transport, they're too big and heavy to reach space and stay there, and if engine tech changes either of those facts, it will change for more dedicated vehicles too. Space tourism like this will take us nowhere. The only long term benefit that will come from this is more experience entering atmospheres in an aerodynamic vehicle, and even then it won't be much use immediately as these suborbital planes start their reentry low and slow. For a real spaceship to make a similar reentry would need a lot of propellant used in slowing down.

Re:If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[khallow]

Reusable SSTO isn't going to develop from continued work on suborbital vehicles like this. [...] Space tourism like this will take us nowhere.

I strongly disagree. Two things to remember: 1) the most important problem for space tourism is developing the market. Turning a profit is a far harder problem than developing an SSTO. The market needs to be demonstrated before someone will invest in an SSTO. 2) One doesn't need SSTO. For example a two stage to orbit (TSTO) fully reusable launch vehicle (RLV) would probably be more efficient. It would require considerably less development effort and have a much better mass fraction.

Re:If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[geckipede]

Agreed that SSTOs are not the only goal, any form of cheap access to space would be good. I still don't believe that Virgin Galactic's model is going to change anything though. It is forming a new market, but one that is selling expensive experiences to people, on a low profit margin. All the innovation they will be motivated to attempt will be in terms of lowering their costs to allow them to give roughly the same experience as they can offer now to a larger market.

Re:If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[linzeal]

Yeah, and the Wright Brothers plane and 20-30 years of tinkering it took to build a reliable plane never happened because the first 5-10 years the planes could barely stay aloft and they learned nothing from their failures and sub-stratospheric flight. You might point out we already know how to build a rocket that can go orbital, even to the moon and beyond. Well I will tell you that none of that knowledge exists in any complete form outside of JPL, ESA, NASA, JSA and now the Chinese space agency. Building a rocket engine is non-trivial, let alone the rest of the systems and until the government starts open sourcing that knowledge the private industry is going to have to learn that on their own.

Re:If this keeps up, we won't need NASA.

[KingAlanI]

"Building a rocket engine is non-trivial"
Come on, it's not brain surgery...

This month?

[tcdk]

Wow, somebody had a busy morning...

For the record...

[cablepokerface]

Richard Branson is by far my favorite actually existing Mad Scientist.

Re:For the record...

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Burt Rutan is mine.

Branson is just the Bill Gates of a different industry.

Re:For the record...

[cnettel]

Yes, Buffet pledged to donate that sum, or rather stock that at the time of the pledge were worth that sum. Gates initial endowment on the other hand was $94 million, which is also off by your numbers. Bill and Melinda Gates have actually given $28 billion and their donations constitute most of the current endowment to the foundation.

Only 20 years?

[yogibaer]

That does not seem like a lot of time. The spacecraft are still in testing stage and at best a couple of years away from small scale tourist business and some decades (a century?) away from Weyland-Yutani style mining operations even within the limits of our solar system. So if you a serious about long-term commitment and you find a good spot for your own spaceport, a 99year lease would have made more sense...

He's a businessman ...

[fantomas]

"So if you a serious about long-term commitment and you find a good spot for your own spaceport, a 99year lease would have made more sense."

He's a businessman. 20 years seems like a long enough commitment, who knows what the economic world will look like in 2030? Might be better to move his operations out to somewhere else in the USA, off to India, China, etc. What's so special about the current site that somewhere else couldn't match in a few years time and give him a better price?

Croydon Airport only lasted as the main international London airport for less than 30 years, would a space port stay in the lead for longer than that? (Croydon Airport started operations in 1920 but was overtaken in the 40s by a small military airport in the west of London built over a hamlet called Heath Row).

Re:He's a businessman ...

[Rick Bentley]

Might be better to move his operations...

Yes it would. Equatorial launch saves a lot of energy when it comes to getting into orbit, the centripetal force from the Earth's rotation is not insignificant.

Remember that the Earth is about 24,000 miles in circumference, making a revolution every 24hrs, that's 1,000mph at the surface -- a nice bit of initial velocity on your way to space. You get this full effect at the equator, you get none of it at the poles. New Mexico is about 32 degrees North of the equator, hardly optimal. There's a reason private companies put payloads into space from the equator.

VG isn't going orbital, so this isn't as big of a deal for them, but I'll bet they plan/hope to in the future. At that point they'll want to be a the equator for their launches. Also, I'm sure New Mexico kicked in some good stuff (rent free or at least rent deferred on the land, maybe some capital improvements on the land, etc...). So, NM is fine for now but in 20 yrs it may not matter.

Re:Reusable SSTO isn't going to develop

[ChangelingJane]

We prefer you say "orbitally challenged".

And this is "historic" how?

[pongo000]

Technically, every business deal is an "historic" moment from the perspective of that exact deal probably never being consummated before. But I'm at a loss to figure out how a business lease qualifies as "historic."

Re:And this is "historic" how?

[flaming error]

Obviously it qualifies as historic because it is "the nation's first purpose-built commercial spaceport".

Other upcoming historic moments include "the first purpose-built commercial Twinkie served at a spaceport," "the first spilled soda on the tarmac of a purpose-built commercial New Mexico spaceport" and "the first Rabbi, Pastor, and Bishop with too few parachutes on a SpaceShip".

Historic?

[GravityStar]

Signing a 20 year lease for a space port is historic? I'll bet history will have something to say about that. Or rather, it won't.

Rather good timing for me!

[Huxley_Dunsany]

Oddly enough, my wife and I are taking a drive to Las Cruces, NM today - it's the closest Jack in the Box to Albuquerque - and our first "sight-seeing" stop on the way home will be the land where the Spaceport is being built!