This was a month before Branson's announcement. Gov Richardson attracted Virgin Galactic to New Mexico and with 40,000 reservations the economic boom to New Mexico is unbelievable. At $200K per person that's $8 Billion Revenue Stream!!! Assume that Virgin Galactic will make 20% before taxes leaves a $6.4 Billion cashflow into the New Mexico economy.
Last Thanksgiving our NSS helped to commemorate the reopening of the Planetarium at The Dallas Science Place. I met the Virgin Galactic VP Ops and asked if he might consider flying some of his commercial missions out of Alliance Airport in Ft Worth. He said that they selected New Mexico because there was plenty of space and not many commerical routes. I said, "Texas! Not enough Space?" Oh well, guess we didn't try hard enough.