If New Mexico Builds It, Will Space Travelers Come?

The Washington Post ^ | Monday, March 26, 2007 | Marc Kaufman

[MinorityRepublican]

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Come April 3, the voters of this sun-baked area near the Mexican border will have an unusual question to answer: Are they happy enough as home to some hardy cotton and chile farmers, a branch of the state university and a growing population of retirees from up north? Or do they want quite literally to blast into a very different future?

In a referendum, the people of Las Cruces and surrounding Do?a Ana County will be voting on a proposal to slightly raise their county sales tax, a highly unpopular idea these days. But in return, southern New Mexico, one of the poorest regions in the nation, would jump on a fast track to hosting the world's first all-commercial spaceport.

If the effort succeeds, a desert valley used by a handful of ranchers could become Spaceport America -- a 21st-century portal for thousands of people hoping to blast into space as tourists, explorers, researchers and, maybe someday, as commuters to destinations halfway around the world.

It's the stuff of "Star Trek" and Buck Rogers, and many skeptical New Mexicans simply roll their eyes. The parched environs are, after all, also home to Roswell, where UFO buffs maintain space aliens and their ship were captured and hidden away for years.

But spaceport advocates, from Gov. Bill Richardson (D) to most of Do?a Ana County's commissioners, the local business community and many at New Mexico State University, are working hard to convince the members of the community that private space travel is an idea whose time has finally come -- to them.

[darth]

The flaw with these inland spaceports is range safety. I personally looked at the proposal for the Brazoria County Spaceport on the Texas coast. I told them that they had to buy out hundreds of homeowners before they could launch over their heads. Furthermore, the flight would have to start with a dogleg to the South to keep well clear of Galveston, New Orleans, etc. which would use up precious fuel needed to make orbit.

[CedarDave]

Just a handfull of folks out here -- many more cows than people and any rancher with smarts will take the money and run. Who can't run are the taxpayers who will be saddled with this boondoggle. But unlike Richardson's Railroad, which is costing close to half a billion of taxpayer monies and is unlikely to recoup even 10% at the fare box and will make it to Santa Fe sometime in the next decade (the GovZilla promises 2008 but a little thing like 500-700 ft. cliffs stand in the way), the taxpayers get to vote on this space scheme. The taxpayers in Dona Ana county aren't completely dumb and I will bet it will go down to defeat by a vote of 60-40 against, or greater.