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Subscribe in NewsGator OnlinePosts Tagged ‘NM Spaceport’
Spaceport America unveils new look
July 4th, 2012 | 
Author: New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson says the effort is aimed at introducing Spaceport America to the world.
The new logo features a pair of blue and red shapes that are meant to symbolize two stars coming together and the collaboration behind man’s reach into space.
The taxpayer-financed spaceport is the world’s first terminal, hangar and runway built specifically for commercial space travel.
Virgin Galactic, its anchor tenant, plans to offer suborbital flights to paying customers.
The Spaceport Operations Center is also one step closer to being complete.
Officials say design of the interior is under way and work will begin by the end of the year.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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2nd wave of Spaceport work to begin
UPHAM, N.M. (AP) – The second wave of construction at Spaceport America is about to get going.
The Las Cruces Sun News ( http://bit.ly/GTEUaa ) reports the final built out includes the permanent Vertical Launch Complex facilities, the visitor center on the main spaceport campus, and the southern road to the spaceport.
Already completed is the 10,000-foot runway, the terminal hangar facility and the internal roads and the dome-looking Space Operations center which is nearly completed.
Spaceport officials hope to have the second phase of construction done by 2013.
Vertical launch approved at Spaceport
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Pushing for saucer rides at Spaceport
LEMITAR, N.M. (KRQE) – A New Mexico scientist is hoping to take tourists visiting Spaceport America for rides in man made flying saucers.
Lindsay Quarrie is the Chairman of Space Sciences Corp., a Lemitar based research and development company, that has signed on as a distributor of the m200, a flying saucer and other experimental aircraft.
Right now Quarrie has his sights set on Spaceport America for the first commercial saucer rides.
“Visitors could come and they could fly on this ‘HALO’ as we call it, a hover airlift and logistics operations vehicle which would take them up about 10 feet and take them across the desert,” Quarrie said.
It’s called the ‘Flying Saucer Experience’ and Quarrie said it would fit in perfectly at Spaceport America’s Visitor’s Center which is set to open sometime in the Fall of 2012.
How much the flying saucer rides will cost has not been decided yet but Quarrie said it will be a lot cheaper than Virgin Galactic’s space flights.
“It’s going to be affordable, it won’t cost $200,000,” said Quarrie.
Space Sciences Corp., is in the process of pitching the ‘Flying Saucer Experience’ to the Spaceport Authority.
If they get on board, Quarrie is certain it will be a hit.
“Who wouldn’t want to come see a flying saucer, get their photo taken in a flying saucer,” he said.
The saucers are in the prototype phase, right now they are built in California, but Quarries said he wants to bring production to his secure facility in Lemitar.
“Our plan is to bring them here, to take advantage of some of the incentives the state has to offer for research and development,” he said.
In the meantime Quarrie is working toward showing off the flying saucer at Spaceport America with a demonstration flight sometime next year.
Quarrie said eventually he would like to see the flying saucers used to transport payloads or for search and rescue missions.
The saucers are not regulated by the FAA if they are flown below 500 feet on private property or below 10 feet on public lands.
For more information about the work Space Sciences Corp. does, check out their website,http://www.spacesciencescorp.com/
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Branson dedicates spaceport runway
UPHAM, N.M. (AP) – Virgin Galactic’s Sir Richard Branson, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and prospective astronauts gathered in the southern New Mexico desert Friday to celebrate the completion of the runway at the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport.
Spaceport America is the world’s first facility designed specifically to launch commercial spacecraft. The celebration of its nearly-two-mile-long runway comes less than two weeks after another major step for Virgin Galactic: the first solo glide flight of its space tourism rocket ship.
“Today is very personal as our dream becomes more real,” Branson said. “People are beginning to believe now. I think the drop flight two weeks ago, which went beautifully, I think it made people sit up and realize this is really reality.”
The British billionaire said the next is more rocket testing, and getting the vehicle called SpaceShipTwo into space. He said he expects flights for space tourists to begin in nine to 18 months, and he will be among the first passengers.
Stretching across a flat dusty plain 45 miles north of Las Cruces, the runway is designed to support almost every aircraft in the world, day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations.
Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant of the taxpayer-funded spaceport and plans to use the facility to take tourists on what will first be short hops into space. State officials want to add companies for other commercial space endeavors, such as research and payload delivery missions.
“Each flight we make, we’ll learn more, we’ll experience, we’ll open up more opportunities that we cannot even conceive of today,” Branson said. “This history, we’re making it right now.”
Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two — the special jet-powered mothership that will carry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude — also made an appearance Friday, passing over the spaceport several times before landing on the new runway.
Tickets for suborbital space rides aboard SpaceShipTwo cost $200,000. The 2½-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness. Some 380 customers have already made deposits totaling more than $50 million, Virgin Galactic officials said Friday.
Branson, the president of Virgin Group, which counts airlines, entertainment and mobile communications among its businesses, partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan on the venture.
Until now, space travel has been limited to astronauts and a handful of wealthy people who have shelled out millions to ride Russian rockets to the international space station.
Some of the soon-to-be astronauts attended Friday’s runway dedication, joined by Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon in 1969 as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.
While space tourism projects such as Virgin Galactic’s venture receive plenty of publicity, the commercial space industry is seeing rapid developments with companies like SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., seeking to win NASA work to supply the International Space Station.
SpaceX has successfully placed a dummy payload into orbit and has contracts to lift satellites next. Other firms, including Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwell, Texas, are testing systems that would carry unmanned payloads to space.
Last month, Congress approved legislation that affirms President Barack Obama’s intent to use commercial carriers to lift humans into near-Earth space.
Concrete pour starts at NM spaceport
UPHAM, N.M. (AP) – Crews have started pouring concrete as part of the final phase of construction on the New Mexico spaceport’s 10,000-foot runway.
The New Mexico Spaceport Authority says the runway is expected to be completed this summer. The work began in August.
The multilayered runway is made up of 24 inches of prepared subgrade, four inches of asphalt and a 14-inch finish layer of concrete. Officials say the first concrete was poured last week.
The runway is designed to support nearly every aircraft in the world and day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations, including returning launch vehicles, fly-back rocket boosters and other training vehicles.
Spaceport America executive director Steve Landeene says the concrete pour is a significant milestone in the realization of the spaceport.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Virgin Galactic to unveil commercial spaceship
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The wraps are coming off a privately financed spacecraft designed to fly passengers into space.
Virgin Galactic plans to roll out SpaceShipTwo on Monday in what a company spokeswoman says will be a “theatrical” unveiling in the Mojave Desert. It will be attended by hundreds of potential space tourists, dignitaries and other VIPs.
SpaceShipTwo is the commercial version of SpaceShipOne. In 2004, SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan, became the first private manned craft to reach space.
The first SpaceShipTwo test flights are expected to start next year from New Mexico’s Spaceport America. It’s unclear when the first customers will go into space.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)