Free Republic

Once aimed at completion last year, the $209 million taxpayer-financed project in the southern New Mexico high desert stands half-finished. In her first two weeks in office, a wary new governor sacked both the Spaceport Authority's board and its executive director. Records show the ambitious project launched under Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson has faced construction delays and a lack of planning. Competition from other states interested in commercial space flights continues to loom. There's also the prospect that the state may need to spend an additional $10 million to $20 million to build a second runway to deal with the...

SANTA FE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The New Mexico Spaceport Authority, which plans to start launching citizen astronauts on suborbital flights within 18 months, has begun soliciting contract bids from local businesses for day-to-day operations of the facility. Construction of the world's first commercial passenger space terminal, dubbed Spaceport America, is slated to be finished next year near the town of Truth or Consequences in southern New Mexico. The 2-mile-long main runway was completed in October. Two other major structures nearing completion at the nearly $200 million facility are the air-fire rescue facility and a 110,000-square-foot hangar, authority spokesman David...

The first images of New Mexico's Spaceport America have been released showing the expected design for the 9,290 square metre (100,000sq foot) facility that could see the first commercial suborbital flights by 2010. The terminal and hangar facility are projected to cost about $31 million and will include suborbital tourism company Virgin Galactic’s pre-flight and post-flight training facilities and lounges, as well as the maintenance hangar for the two White Knight II carrier aircraft and five SpaceShipTwo vehicles. With spaceport construction expected to cost $198 million and to start in 2008, with completion by 2010, the port will host the...

Sporting little more than a small concrete launch pad and a cluster of portable buildings, New Mexico's spaceport is a far cry from NASA's Kennedy Space Center— a 144,000-acre city of buildings, launch pads and runways with its own ZIP code. But spaceport backers are thinking big ... really big. State officials today, while attending a major European aerospace show, plan to announce a sweeping new name that seeks to capitalize on New Mexico's status as home to the country's first hub for commercial space flight and tourism. Introducing: Spaceport America. "This is an international project, it puts New Mexico...