space_hippy writes "The next step for a project we've previously discussed has now come around: thanks to a sales tax increase it seems as though the residents of Dona Ana county in New Mexico will be playing host to the first American commercial spaceport. From the BBC article: 'Residents in the US state of New Mexico have approved a new tax to build the nation's first commercial spaceport. Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swath of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business. The spaceport is expected to open in 2009, and Virgin Galactic says space flights will cost around $200,000 for a 2.5-hour flight.'"
I assume this is a sub-orbital flight past the boundary of space like Spaceship 1 took, but doing that would still qualify for my life-goal of "see earth from space". I want to do this before I die. Even if I'm 90 and the flight will probably kill me, I'd sign whatever waivers I needed to and take my chances.
I wonder how 200k compares to the cost of airline flights at the birth of commercial aviation after adjusting for inflation? I'm guessing it's still quite a bit more, but maybe not too far? Either way, the point is that it's only a 1-2 orders of magnitude from where many people would be able to do it, including myself. And that makes me very excited.
Sure, it's not 100km, but it's high enough to get the curvature of the planet and what might as well be a vaccuum outside. And costs a tenth as much. And keeps you up there for almost an hour.
Besides, if it's not orbital, is it really all that different? SS1 is so far from an orbital spacecraft it's not even funny. Now the Falcon, that's a good private rocket:)
Besides, if it's not orbital, is it really all that different? SS1 is so far from an orbital spacecraft it's not even funny. Now the Falcon, that's a good private rocket:)
Yeah, I'd say 20km vs 100km is a big difference. But I'll consider the MiG as a backup plan if Virgin Galactic doesn't pan out.:)
And believe me, I'm hoping for orbital. You don't have to tell me SS1 is not even close to orbital. I don't think it's ridiculous to think I may see it by the time I'm 90, though it's of course tremendously
I wonder how 200k compares to the cost of airline flights at the birth of commercial aviation after adjusting for inflation? I'm guessing it's still quite a bit more, but maybe not too far? Either way, the point is that it's only a 1-2 orders of magnitude from where many people would be able to do it, including myself. And that makes me very excited.
Very interesting question. As a bit of a benchmark, a flight in a Russian MIG fighter jet (http://www.atlasaerospace.net/eng/pilot.htm/ [atlasaerospace.net]) currently ranges from roughly $8K to $17K for a 45 minute ride. The projected space flight would be approximately 3.33 times the duration, so a MIG flight lasting the same would be roughly $50K (for one of the higher end aircraft such as the MIG-25 or MIG-31) or 25% of cost of the space flight. Considering the difference in velocity, distance traveled (MIGs have an ope [wikipedia.org]
Now obviously airline flights had more immediate utility for a wealthy business man than a simple joy ride into space, though it was a luxury. So let's just assume that space flight doesn't become a commodity like airline tickets are today, but will travel down a somewhat similar cost curve so that it is at least feasible for average people to take as a 'family vacation' or some such.
I consider myself a space enthusiast, but I find it amazing that in a time when initiatives to raise taxes to better fund schools routinely fail, that this one passes. I can only surmise that the economic situation in the area is truly desperate. Sadly, I suspect that Virgin Galactic is getting the better end of the deal. Any increase in jobs is likely to be temporary and primarily associated with construction of the facility. And increased tourism is just a huge guess. I wish them luck, but this is a huge gamble.
It's a small tax increase. The risk to reward ratio is pretty good on this one. Sure , it might fail, but if it pays off, it will pay off in a very big way.
This is the real question: Is this the equivilant of the first international Airport, or the first international dirigable-port?
If the ratio is so great, how come Branson isn't willing to fund it himself? If it was a good investment, I would be investing with MY cash!
He is investing his cash! Way more than NM is spending. The point is that all else being equal he wouldn't be funding it to be built in New Mexico.
It's not like the proposed Branson build a space port and he said "Hey, neat idea, would you pay me to do it?" Branson wanted to build a space port already, and while shopping around for locations NM said "Hey, we'd chip in if you built it here".
I don't think the comparison between this tax proposal and one for local schools is valid.
First of all, this is going from zero to something instead of huge to even larger. There is no existing spaceport authority to show they have mis-managed tax dollars in the past, something which many school districts can be accused of doing.
If you think about it, a teacher can only be supported by a finite number of families. Yes, taxing wealthy people does have an impact, but if you tax the wealthy too much, they simply move out. If the average class size is 30 students, and families have on average 3 kids, that means you can only have 10 families support one teacher. The salary of that teacher is directly tied to the salaries/wages/income of those 10 families and raising or lowering taxes only redistributes that basic support base.
If you think of preschools/daycare centers, this number is reduced even more, so it is a clear demonstration that day care centers will never make significant money except when catering to the very wealthy.
The same could be said about policemen, firefighters, and other typical municipal workers and to explain why they make the money that they do.
Why this is so completely different is that we aren't talking about what one small community must support, but what kind of financial support and revenue could result that would be of a regional or even a continental level of income. The number of communities that are competing on this level right now is precisely two (New Mexico and Virginia) with two other potential suitors (Florida and Texas). At the very least, New Mexico will be a regional center for the entire western USA for this kind of activity.
Raising the tax rate for funding local schools (which may or may not have merit) isn't going to give a local region a significant advantage over any other region of the country. At best it will help fix some long term problem that may need a solution that doesn't require money as well.
Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.
Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN [wikipedia.org] (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP [nam.org]) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k [wikipedia.org], so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k, so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?
No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live. He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth.
Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
Is this the best thing for them? Well we'll have to see. It really depends on what happens to Virgin Galactic. If it succeeds, then this little place in New Mexico that you've never heard of before could become a significant tourist destination.
No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live
That statement assumes that multi-millionaires will spend any remotely-significant amount of their money in town. What is more likely is that they will fly into the spaceport via private jet, stay in luxury accomodations at the spaceport, get blasted into space, land, and fly home via their private jet.
It is extremely likely that Virgin will structure things such that payment for all of this will take place in such a manner that New Mexico and (ironically) the county, will not see a dime in sales tax.
He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
You and I both have little idea if that statement is true, but it's irrelevant nonetheless: my point is that the people of the county in question will most likely be better off if Branson hadn't built the spaceport (in their county), or hadn't received a dime from them.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth. Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
That's an invalid straw man argument.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
"Trickle down" doesn't exist. It's bullshit made up by an actor who played President to justify to poor people why he was handing rich people and corporations tax cuts.
Irregardless, you're also again relying on the completely speculative argument that "if a spaceport is built, it will benefit the county." That seems very dubious, given the scale just tipped $50,000,000 out of their favor, and all Branson has committed to doing is leasing some facilities and land.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
The engineers will built very expensive homes in the nicest places (which is where people are usually already living), close to the spaceport. When Joe Engineer offers a big lump of cash to a hesitant (or greedy) potential seller and the deal closes, guess what happens to the property values for land around where Joe Engineer now lives? It goes up. And guess what happens to property taxes? They go up. My parents have a close friend who is 80 and has lived in my hometown for half her life, working much of it tirelessly as a volunteer- and she can't afford the property taxes on the modest home and small parcel of land she owns, because the valuation by the town has tripled based on sale prices of homes around her and in the rest of the town.
Back to NM...some landlords will cash out, kicking out tenants, who will now be looking for places to live- further bumping up demand for remaining property or rentals. The engineers will not want to live next to run-down houses or trailer homes owned by the locals, and they'll start pushing their towns to "do something" about it; suddenly Joe Trailerpark finds himself slapped with a $100 fine for having his Camaro on cinderblocks and $50 for not mowing his lawn. The restaurants and grocery stores will realize their customers can pay more for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas for that luxury SUV- and because their workers have been priced out of living in/near town, they have to look harder for people to staff the registers, or pay more. Etc.
Maybe you should come to Doña Anna County, and look at the actual conditions here. Joe Engineer, taking one look at the property where someone already lives, will realize that it's hot, dry, sandy-rocky land just like the stuff ten miles closer to the spaceport, that the land closer to the spaceport is cheaper to buy because it's undeveloped, and that it'll be cheaper to develop because he won't have to tear down existing buildings. He won't gentrify because, given the real estate in Doña Anna Cou
And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions?
1) Own a home in the area when property values skyrocket. 2) Sell home at drastically inflated price. 3) Profit.
The only people who stand to lose from that arrangement are those who don't already own their homes. But that's what you get for throwing hundreds/thousands of dollars a month into the black pit known as "rent".
There are a lot of people throwing money into that black pit, many for good reasons. Just because they don't own houses now doesn't mean we shouldn't consider how they're impacted. There probably will be some positive effects for everyone, but increased cost of living is a concern for lots of people.
Two more things:
1. If you sell your house for profit you still have to live somewhere. You either buy another home at drastically inflated price (and in the process you'd lose money buying a house of equal value, because of all the money that flows out to lawyers, real-estate agents and the like), you throw money down the rent hole (more lossage) or you move somewhere else.
2. You have to pay more in property taxes if you just sit on your more valuable land. In California they passed a law a while back limiting annual value assessment changes, and it's a popular law that's helped people stay in their homes, but since property value does get reassessed (which almost always means a drastic increase in its taxed value) when you buy, sell or improve property it discourages these activities. And people become experts in finding shady ways to dodge reassessment. I think it raises the barrier for new property owners even higher, since new owners have to shoulder more tax burden. Which keeps more people throwing money down the rent hole. Which isn't to say that there aren't better ways it could be handled... just that the increasing value of your home/land might not actually make you rich.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%....your point being? His wealth isn't sitting as giant gold bricks in his house you know, right? Most of it is invested in companies and thus using it would hurt those companies. Other parts of it may be tied to banks and removing that would impede the banks ability to give out loans.
From the article you'd think they were refering to the third world. Dona Ana county contains Las Cruces which has New Mexico State University. A very large state school and a pretty good engineering school. I went there. Second White Sands Missle Range is just over the Oragon Mountains (We used to have tailgate parties and watch the pretty lights).
And did I mention Sandia Labs and Los Alamos in the northern part of the state? Microsoft had its first offices in Albuquerque. Anyone remember the Altair 8800? The place is TECH HEAVY. I mean I remember tourning a reactor at one of the labs on a field trip as a freshman in high school. A lot my classmates parents were engineers or physicists.
And don't get me started about "bleak swath of dessert." To know the dessert is to love it.
As optimistic as I may be about the prospect of manned space flight, the entire proposition seems a little contrived to me.
The Wright Brothers didn't need an airport to build the first working plane. I'm guessing that what we think of as "airports" and "seaports" today didn't exist for some time after the advent of commercial air and sea travel. Rather, they were probably born of some need to consolidate services and facilities. Right now, there is no need for either with regards to commercial space tr
My parents live in the county, I went to university there, and travel there occasionally.
Doña Ana county is home to a boom town -- Las Cruces. And unlike places like California and Las Vegas the boom hasn't died out. Hospitals, shopping, roads, banks, and all kinds of other infrastructure are popping up all over.
Las Cruces (the county seat) is about 45 minutes from El Paso, TX. There's a fairly large university there (NMSU) and no shortage of people looking for work.
Best of all -- for a spaceport -- there's land near this infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land, sparsely populated.
It's also dirt poor. I spent 35 of my first 40 years there. If you didn't teach at NMSU(my Dad was in the College of Ag.), work for a contractor at White Sands Missle Range, own one of the large farms, or your own business, it was a struggle. The prevailing attitude into the 80's was: you don't want to work for min. wage? There are 16,000 college kids who will and if they won't there are 25,000 wets(illegal aliens) that will work for less! The per capita income in NM is in the bottom 5 in the country. Most
and I saw it. At the X Prize Cup. Dona Ana county is really pretty, and there's a lot of support for building Spaceport America there. It's great that they are figuring it out, D. Kent Evans (the county commish) and everyone else deserve a huge pat on the back for this. The area is mostly agricultural, the spaceport (and X Prize, rocket races, etc) promise to bring both tech and service jobs to the area. Suborbital flights are only the beginning, if rocket racing or orbital shots become feasible they can be hosted there as well.
This won't be the first US commercial spaceport.
Mojave Spaceport [wikipedia.org] has been active for several years now. SpaceShip One launched from there.
Rotary Rocket was supposed to launch their SSTO vehicle from Mojave, and built a vertical assembly building and a prototype at Mojave. But they had a weight growth problem and never got beyond low-altitude testing.
The problem with Mojave is that they are not equipped (nor have the proper airspace) for surface-launched rockets. Keep in mind that Spaceship One was an air launch that started as a conventional airplane take-off. Their license is strictly for air-launched spacecraft that originates at Mojave. I might be mistaken on this point, and if I am please enlighten me. New Mexico will be different because they are going to be a ground-launch rocket spaceport. In this regard, they are similar to the effort at Vir
Think about the jobs that this opens up. Janitors, security guards, secretaries, and the businesses that sell to them, as well as to the travelers who come through. Hotels require waiters, maids, etc. A lot of service level jobs can be found at an airport.
Are you aware of how huge the tourism industry (which often makes its best profit margins off the small groups of "international super-rich assholes") is in many, many places throughout the world?
Perhaps they (these New Mexicans) have enough vision to realize that if a major corporation opens a one-of-a-kind (as in, go to space for less than a million dollars) buisness in their backyard, the chance of them getting good-paying (by their current standards, although you'd probably still call it "menial, servile") jobs increases dramatically?
You and the other responders are wildly optimistic. There needs to be mass tourism for it to be attractive as a large-scale tourism development project. This spaceport will be a small luxury attraction, hardly a huge tourist attraction. In any event, I agree that the locals need the jobs. It is sad that in their desperation they can only clutch at straws like this. It is far from clear that 200,000 people can become prosperous within the first 10 or 20 years from this project.
It is far from clear that 200,000 people can become prosperous within the first 10 or 20 years from this project.
Prosperous? What kind of idiot are you.
It's an investment, they don't need to each make half a million on it. As long as it pays of better than other types of investments they could make then it was worth it. They'll be getting both regular and very rich tourists, the later are likely to spend some money.
If you had done a tiny bit of research you would ahve found out that: A) Many companies are looking for more places to launch satalites. B) Parts of the complex are going to be used for other industry C) It doesn't take a lot of rich people to maek a profit in putting them into space D) Company will have space launch for promotional reasons. E) They will need to attract higher paid people for launch support. F) They will need more high paid people for IT support G) Those higher paid people tend spend there money locally H) It is an investment. They think those items I list(and others) wil pay off over the long run.
You have a lack of imagination, vision, and common sense. Please get off the internet.
Agreed. Lets assume that each of those 200,000 on average earn $20,000/year. Lets also assume that each of them spend all their earnings because poor people can not save money. Then the 0.25% sales tax increase means that the county collects an extra 10 million dollars each year. That money is hardly enough to build and run a normal airport, let alone a highly experimental space airport. There is no way that their projected earnings can make up for those costs.
You know, I'm pretty sure in the 10th century, the idea of colonizing across a few thousand miles of oceans would have been laughed at. The technology of the day wouldn't make it possible. But if the shipbuilders of the year 1000 had decided they've reached the pinnacle of transportation technology, and no further advancements would ever be possible, would you ever have been born?
Physical limitations, energy and mass balances and the like don't give a crap about your sappy dreams.
Funny thing. If you take the total energy potential of 100 kg object on Earth, and then compare it to a 100 kg object on Mars, do you know what you get for a difference?
You know, I'm pretty sure in the 10th century, the idea of colonizing across a few thousand miles of oceans would have been laughed at.
The Polynesian people colonized Easter Island in the second century AD, and Hawaii in the third. The Vikings reached Vinland (Newfoundland and Labrador) in the 11th century after Greenland in the 10th. It's controversial, but a pre-Clovis stone age culture may have colonized North America from Europe well before that.
The "colonizing the Americas" metaphor is a pretty dumb one. It took almost no technology once you got there; technically, you could colonize with two people and a spear, although practically it took more. However, a colony on another planet has *no life* and *no life support* as its starting point. Hence, it is entirely dependent on modern technology for everything that it does. Hence, you have to recreate modern technology production. Modern technology has monstrous dependency chains that can't really be simplified to a great extent.
Funny thing. If you take the total energy potential of 100 kg object on Earth, and then compare it to a 100 kg object on Mars, do you know what you get for a difference?
A tremendous amount of delta-V to get one to the other.
A tremendous amount of delta-V to get one to the other.
The question wasn't about current technology. The GP stated physical impossibility - I'm merely pointing out that it's really only a few kilowatt-hours of work to move a kg from Earth surface to Mars. No, I don't know (nor can I readily concieve) of a technology to accomplish that. But in five hundred, a thousand, whatever years, it may be possible. Ruling it out as a physical impossibility today is silly.
You are using a tired old argument that is just not true. Polynesia was settled thousands of years ago using small watercraft that are quite primitive by our standards. No laws of physics were there to stop them, no need for vast amounts of fuel to move miniscule masses from one place to another. They traveled thousands of miles under dangerous conditions. There are many other historical examples of such migrations, large and small. Shipping large amounts of people to Mars or even into orbit faces physical
Shipping large amounts of people to Mars or even into orbit faces physical limitations that cannot be overcome with mere words.
I thought you were being serious until I read "If you take the total energy potential of 100 kg object on Earth, and then compare it to a 100 kg object on Mars, do you know what you get for a difference?" What precesiely are you asking?
What, precisely, am I asking? Well, what is that minimum amount of work required to move an object from the surface of the Earth to the surface of Ma
Even if you hypothesize some technology whereby the energy spent getting out of earth's gravity well can be recovered dropping into mar's gravity well, you still need to spend the energy to get off earth first, and that's a lot of energy.
Even if you don't figure landing on Mars, but just reaching mars orbit, it still doesn't add much energy to the problem. (Okay, redid the calculations, it sort of does. It's 1.4E10 J instead of 1.1E10. So about a quarter.)
Net change in potential energy isn't a useful metri
Where his argument is tired and cliche, yours is fatally myopic. Saying "We will never colonize space because only the extremely rich and elite go there now" is like saying "The sun will never burn out because right now it looks really bright." It's absurdly shortsighted. Remember that while space holds a nearly infinite amount of usable resources, earth houses a finite amount of usable resources that are becoming scarcer by the second. I would argue that the desire for resources has fuelled all human migra
While I depressingly agree with most of what you said, I disagree that progress here on earth and robotic exploration of space are mutually exclusive. Quite to the contrary, I see robotic exploration as just another way to pick up R&D funds for new tech. It's been funding improved solar cells, AI research (esp. vision recognition), thermovoltaic generation, high bandwidth/low power radio communication, and countless other things. Meanwhile, we get to learn about our reality around us.
For those of us who have followed Cassini, it's been one continual excitement after another. Carolyn Porco, head of the imaging team, refers to scientific discovery as the reason she doesn't need church. It gives her the same sense of peace and awe that people go to church to experience -- I can totally agree with that sentiment. Just to pick one example amount the countless: in Enceladus's geysers (a truly amazing discovery for a distant, shiny, frigid ice ball not under heavy tidal stresses), they've found acetylene and propane. That blows the mind. This means either A) it was either VERY hot in there long ago and all of this organic matter has been trapped for this long, B) it is VERY hot in there now or recently, or C) there's catalytic chemistry going on in its subsurface ocean -- the same sort of proto-life chemistry that ended up producing us. And the wonderful thing about Enceladus's geysers? They're spewing large amounts of that ocean into space -- enough to coat other moons, enough to make it the moon in the solar system, enough to create a major enough ring around Saturn that makes Saturn's magnetic field lag behind it's rotation. We don't have to drill to see what's in there; a lander could pick up the stuff straight from the surface.
A few people may eventually make it out there, but at great cost and nothing that can be called "colonization" or "humanity's escape from cataclysm."
Bravo. I think in one sentence you just summed up ~50 years of space "exploration."
The best part of it? The people who have made out like bandits (telecommunications/entertainment companies, defense contractors which "do" everything NASA needs done and built all the satellites lofted into space and the missiles that thankfully haven't been) are liable to
I still say Orion [wikipedia.org] would have been a success. You know, except for that irradiating a bunch of fish when any of them crash thing. But, really, who eats non-farmed fish anymore, anyway?
I think I speak for everyone who believes that mankind needs to continue reaching for the stars when I say this: You are an asshole.
Just because right now we can't snap our fingers and be on Mars, or out of the solar system, doesn't mean we should give up and never try. Because then we certainly won't ever leave this rock. No one thinks that building a spaceport in NM means we'll all be spending our summers in the Cassini Division sipping space martinis. But humanity doesn't end with our generation (hopefull
In other words, saying "getting to space doesn't take much power" is like saying "The 'color force' that holds quarks together has a tremendous amount of energy, so all we need to do is harness it." The fact is that every second you're not in orbit, Earth is tugging on you with 9.8 m/s^2. And there's that pesky atmosphere in the way. And then there's the issue of getting your acceleration in a way that doesn't scale exponentially with desired delta-V. Realities like these get in the way of a good analog
In this particular case the appeal was to personal self-interest. At least the philosophy was that by approving this sort of modest tax increase (it is only 0.25%... although I will admit those are the worst kind because of this very arguement) they will get some very tangible benefits in the long run. As has been pointed out in the article, this is a largely undeveloped part of the USA where the dot-com bubble/bust/recovery never even happened at all. By all accounts it is a pretty sleepy part of America
So, about 300 people a year are going to turn up for the reverse experience of bungee jumping. And each one of them's going to spend a shitlot of money on tourist products? "New Mexico was so bad I left the planet!" t-shirts? Unless they're planning to sell replica spaceships that actually go into space at $3m per boat, what the hell are they going to do to make tourist money?
Quite right. Maintaining a spaceport or the R&D facilities that are sure to spring up around it isn't going to generate any jobs
200k for a flight (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how 200k compares to the cost of airline flights at the birth of commercial aviation after adjusting for inflation? I'm guessing it's still quite a bit more, but maybe not too far? Either way, the point is that it's only a 1-2 orders of magnitude from where many people would be able to do it, including myself. And that makes me very excited.
Re:200k for a flight (Score:4, Insightful)
Ride a MiG. [incredible...ntures.com]
Sure, it's not 100km, but it's high enough to get the curvature of the planet and what might as well be a vaccuum outside. And costs a tenth as much. And keeps you up there for almost an hour.
Besides, if it's not orbital, is it really all that different? SS1 is so far from an orbital spacecraft it's not even funny. Now the Falcon, that's a good private rocket
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'd say 20km vs 100km is a big difference. But I'll consider the MiG as a backup plan if Virgin Galactic doesn't pan out.
And believe me, I'm hoping for orbital. You don't have to tell me SS1 is not even close to orbital. I don't think it's ridiculous to think I may see it by the time I'm 90, though it's of course tremendously
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how 200k compares to the cost of airline flights at the birth of commercial aviation after adjusting for inflation? I'm guessing it's still quite a bit more, but maybe not too far? Either way, the point is that it's only a 1-2 orders of magnitude from where many people would be able to do it, including myself. And that makes me very excited.
Very interesting question. As a bit of a benchmark, a flight in a Russian MIG fighter jet (http://www.atlasaerospace.net/eng/pilot.htm/ [atlasaerospace.net]) currently ranges from roughly $8K to $17K for a 45 minute ride. The projected space flight would be approximately 3.33 times the duration, so a MIG flight lasting the same would be roughly $50K (for one of the higher end aircraft such as the MIG-25 or MIG-31) or 25% of cost of the space flight. Considering the difference in velocity, distance traveled (MIGs have an ope [wikipedia.org]
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Now obviously airline flights had more immediate utility for a wealthy business man than a simple joy ride into space, though it was a luxury. So let's just assume that space flight doesn't become a commodity like airline tickets are today, but will travel down a somewhat similar cost curve so that it is at least feasible for average people to take as a 'family vacation' or some such.
Pie In The Sky, Way Up In The Sky (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure , it might fail, but if it pays off, it will pay off in a very big way.
This is the real question:
Is this the equivilant of the first international Airport, or the first international dirigable-port?
Re:Pie In The Sky, Way Up In The Sky (Score:4, Informative)
He is investing his cash! Way more than NM is spending. The point is that all else being equal he wouldn't be funding it to be built in New Mexico.
It's not like the proposed Branson build a space port and he said "Hey, neat idea, would you pay me to do it?" Branson wanted to build a space port already, and while shopping around for locations NM said "Hey, we'd chip in if you built it here".
Parent
Re:Pie In The Sky, Way Up In The Sky (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, this is going from zero to something instead of huge to even larger. There is no existing spaceport authority to show they have mis-managed tax dollars in the past, something which many school districts can be accused of doing.
If you think about it, a teacher can only be supported by a finite number of families. Yes, taxing wealthy people does have an impact, but if you tax the wealthy too much, they simply move out. If the average class size is 30 students, and families have on average 3 kids, that means you can only have 10 families support one teacher. The salary of that teacher is directly tied to the salaries/wages/income of those 10 families and raising or lowering taxes only redistributes that basic support base.
If you think of preschools/daycare centers, this number is reduced even more, so it is a clear demonstration that day care centers will never make significant money except when catering to the very wealthy.
The same could be said about policemen, firefighters, and other typical municipal workers and to explain why they make the money that they do.
Why this is so completely different is that we aren't talking about what one small community must support, but what kind of financial support and revenue could result that would be of a regional or even a continental level of income. The number of communities that are competing on this level right now is precisely two (New Mexico and Virginia) with two other potential suitors (Florida and Texas). At the very least, New Mexico will be a regional center for the entire western USA for this kind of activity.
Raising the tax rate for funding local schools (which may or may not have merit) isn't going to give a local region a significant advantage over any other region of the country. At best it will help fix some long term problem that may need a solution that doesn't require money as well.
Parent
the great American jobs scam, at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.
Ah, cue the great lie that tax incentives to draw corporations "create" jobs [amazon.com].
Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN [wikipedia.org] (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP [nam.org]) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k [wikipedia.org], so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
Re:the great American jobs scam, at work (Score:5, Insightful)
No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live. He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth.
Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
Is this the best thing for them? Well we'll have to see. It really depends on what happens to Virgin Galactic. If it succeeds, then this little place in New Mexico that you've never heard of before could become a significant tourist destination.
Parent
Straw-man arguments and gentrification (Score:4, Insightful)
No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live
That statement assumes that multi-millionaires will spend any remotely-significant amount of their money in town. What is more likely is that they will fly into the spaceport via private jet, stay in luxury accomodations at the spaceport, get blasted into space, land, and fly home via their private jet.
It is extremely likely that Virgin will structure things such that payment for all of this will take place in such a manner that New Mexico and (ironically) the county, will not see a dime in sales tax.
He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
You and I both have little idea if that statement is true, but it's irrelevant nonetheless: my point is that the people of the county in question will most likely be better off if Branson hadn't built the spaceport (in their county), or hadn't received a dime from them.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth. Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
That's an invalid straw man argument.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
"Trickle down" doesn't exist. It's bullshit made up by an actor who played President to justify to poor people why he was handing rich people and corporations tax cuts.
Irregardless, you're also again relying on the completely speculative argument that "if a spaceport is built, it will benefit the county." That seems very dubious, given the scale just tipped $50,000,000 out of their favor, and all Branson has committed to doing is leasing some facilities and land.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
The engineers will built very expensive homes in the nicest places (which is where people are usually already living), close to the spaceport. When Joe Engineer offers a big lump of cash to a hesitant (or greedy) potential seller and the deal closes, guess what happens to the property values for land around where Joe Engineer now lives? It goes up. And guess what happens to property taxes? They go up. My parents have a close friend who is 80 and has lived in my hometown for half her life, working much of it tirelessly as a volunteer- and she can't afford the property taxes on the modest home and small parcel of land she owns, because the valuation by the town has tripled based on sale prices of homes around her and in the rest of the town.
Back to NM...some landlords will cash out, kicking out tenants, who will now be looking for places to live- further bumping up demand for remaining property or rentals. The engineers will not want to live next to run-down houses or trailer homes owned by the locals, and they'll start pushing their towns to "do something" about it; suddenly Joe Trailerpark finds himself slapped with a $100 fine for having his Camaro on cinderblocks and $50 for not mowing his lawn. The restaurants and grocery stores will realize their customers can pay more for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas for that luxury SUV- and because their workers have been priced out of living in/near town, they have to look harder for people to staff the registers, or pay more. Etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Joe Engineer, taking one look at the property where someone already lives, will realize that it's hot, dry, sandy-rocky land just like the stuff ten miles closer to the spaceport, that the land closer to the spaceport is cheaper to buy because it's undeveloped, and that it'll be cheaper to develop because he won't have to tear down existing buildings. He won't gentrify because, given the real estate in Doña Anna Cou
Re:the great American jobs scam, at work (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Own a home in the area when property values skyrocket.
2) Sell home at drastically inflated price.
3) Profit.
The only people who stand to lose from that arrangement are those who don't already own their homes. But that's what you get for throwing hundreds/thousands of dollars a month into the black pit known as "rent".
Parent
Re:the great American jobs scam, at work (Score:4, Insightful)
Two more things:
1. If you sell your house for profit you still have to live somewhere. You either buy another home at drastically inflated price (and in the process you'd lose money buying a house of equal value, because of all the money that flows out to lawyers, real-estate agents and the like), you throw money down the rent hole (more lossage) or you move somewhere else.
2. You have to pay more in property taxes if you just sit on your more valuable land. In California they passed a law a while back limiting annual value assessment changes, and it's a popular law that's helped people stay in their homes, but since property value does get reassessed (which almost always means a drastic increase in its taxed value) when you buy, sell or improve property it discourages these activities. And people become experts in finding shady ways to dodge reassessment. I think it raises the barrier for new property owners even higher, since new owners have to shoulder more tax burden. Which keeps more people throwing money down the rent hole. Which isn't to say that there aren't better ways it could be handled... just that the increasing value of your home/land might not actually make you rich.
Parent
Re:the great American jobs scam, at work (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
You're Not From Around Here Are You? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article you'd think they were refering to the third world. Dona Ana county contains Las Cruces which has New Mexico State University. A very large state school and a pretty good engineering school. I went there. Second White Sands Missle Range is just over the Oragon Mountains (We used to have tailgate parties and watch the pretty lights).
And did I mention Sandia Labs and Los Alamos in the northern part of the state? Microsoft had its first offices in Albuquerque. Anyone remember the Altair 8800? The place is TECH HEAVY. I mean I remember tourning a reactor at one of the labs on a field trip as a freshman in high school. A lot my classmates parents were engineers or physicists.
And don't get me started about "bleak swath of dessert." To know the dessert is to love it.
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I love dessert! Mmmmm ice cream, cake, doughnuts, creme broulet, chocolate pudding with smashed up oreos in it.
MMMMMMMMMM yummy
Theme Park (Score:2, Interesting)
The Wright Brothers didn't need an airport to build the first working plane. I'm guessing that what we think of as "airports" and "seaports" today didn't exist for some time after the advent of commercial air and sea travel. Rather, they were probably born of some need to consolidate services and facilities. Right now, there is no need for either with regards to commercial space tr
Dona Ana spaceport: (Score:5, Funny)
(Did they choose this place because it has a two word name!?)
SLM
Do the "critics" RTFA? (Score:2, Interesting)
But critics of the tax plan say the money could be better spent on existing county problems. "
Who are these critics, and do they RTFA? Do they mean existing problems like high unemployment and lack of revenue?
Resident's report on Doña Ana county (Score:4, Insightful)
Doña Ana county is home to a boom town -- Las Cruces. And unlike places like California and Las Vegas the boom hasn't died out. Hospitals, shopping, roads, banks, and all kinds of other infrastructure are popping up all over.
Las Cruces (the county seat) is about 45 minutes from El Paso, TX. There's a fairly large university there (NMSU) and no shortage of people looking for work.
Best of all -- for a spaceport -- there's land near this infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land, sparsely populated.
It's a great place to build a spaceport.
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I was there... (Score:3, Informative)
You can read my review of the X Prize Cup event, from a vendor/small biz perspective here:
http://www.postcardstospace.com/xprizecup.html [postcardstospace.com]
Anyway, we return you to your regularly scheduled flamewar...
Josh
Mojave is already the first commercial spaceport (Score:3, Insightful)
This won't be the first US commercial spaceport. Mojave Spaceport [wikipedia.org] has been active for several years now. SpaceShip One launched from there.
Rotary Rocket was supposed to launch their SSTO vehicle from Mojave, and built a vertical assembly building and a prototype at Mojave. But they had a weight growth problem and never got beyond low-altitude testing.
Re:Mojave is already the first commercial spacepor (Score:3, Informative)
New Mexico will be different because they are going to be a ground-launch rocket spaceport. In this regard, they are similar to the effort at Vir
Re:why would they pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:why would they pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those "SciFi fanboys" were the voters, as in residents. But hey, what would they know?
Parent
Pretty sure you're trolling.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you aware of how huge the tourism industry (which often makes its best profit margins off the small groups of "international super-rich assholes") is in many, many places throughout the world?
Perhaps they (these New Mexicans) have enough vision to realize that if a major corporation opens a one-of-a-kind (as in, go to space for less than a million dollars) buisness in their backyard, the chance of them getting good-paying (by their current standards, although you'd probably still call it "menial, servile") jobs increases dramatically?
Parent
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Prosperous? What kind of idiot are you.
It's an investment, they don't need to each make half a million on it. As long as it pays of better than other types of investments they could make then it was worth it. They'll be getting both regular and very rich tourists, the later are likely to spend some money.
Your ignorance is showing (Score:4, Insightful)
A) Many companies are looking for more places to launch satalites.
B) Parts of the complex are going to be used for other industry
C) It doesn't take a lot of rich people to maek a profit in putting them into space
D) Company will have space launch for promotional reasons.
E) They will need to attract higher paid people for launch support.
F) They will need more high paid people for IT support
G) Those higher paid people tend spend there money locally
H) It is an investment. They think those items I list(and others) wil pay off over the long run.
You have a lack of imagination, vision, and common sense.
Please get off the internet.
Parent
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Please get off the internet.
What are you talking about?! He's exactly where he belongs!
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What else could you do with ten million? You
Re:finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing. If you take the total energy potential of 100 kg object on Earth, and then compare it to a 100 kg object on Mars, do you know what you get for a difference?
Parent
Re:finally (Score:5, Insightful)
The Polynesian people colonized Easter Island in the second century AD, and Hawaii in the third. The Vikings reached Vinland (Newfoundland and Labrador) in the 11th century after Greenland in the 10th. It's controversial, but a pre-Clovis stone age culture may have colonized North America from Europe well before that.
The "colonizing the Americas" metaphor is a pretty dumb one. It took almost no technology once you got there; technically, you could colonize with two people and a spear, although practically it took more. However, a colony on another planet has *no life* and *no life support* as its starting point. Hence, it is entirely dependent on modern technology for everything that it does. Hence, you have to recreate modern technology production. Modern technology has monstrous dependency chains that can't really be simplified to a great extent.
Funny thing. If you take the total energy potential of 100 kg object on Earth, and then compare it to a 100 kg object on Mars, do you know what you get for a difference?
A tremendous amount of delta-V to get one to the other.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The question wasn't about current technology. The GP stated physical impossibility - I'm merely pointing out that it's really only a few kilowatt-hours of work to move a kg from Earth surface to Mars. No, I don't know (nor can I readily concieve) of a technology to accomplish that. But in five hundred, a thousand, whatever years, it may be possible. Ruling it out as a physical impossibility today is silly.
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Physical limitations (Score:3, Insightful)
What, precisely, am I asking? Well, what is that minimum amount of work required to move an object from the surface of the Earth to the surface of Ma
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Even if you don't figure landing on Mars, but just reaching mars orbit, it still doesn't add much energy to the problem. (Okay, redid the calculations, it sort of does. It's 1.4E10 J instead of 1.1E10. So about a quarter.)
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Remember that while space holds a nearly infinite amount of usable resources, earth houses a finite amount of usable resources that are becoming scarcer by the second. I would argue that the desire for resources has fuelled all human migra
Re:finally (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of us who have followed Cassini, it's been one continual excitement after another. Carolyn Porco, head of the imaging team, refers to scientific discovery as the reason she doesn't need church. It gives her the same sense of peace and awe that people go to church to experience -- I can totally agree with that sentiment. Just to pick one example amount the countless: in Enceladus's geysers (a truly amazing discovery for a distant, shiny, frigid ice ball not under heavy tidal stresses), they've found acetylene and propane. That blows the mind. This means either A) it was either VERY hot in there long ago and all of this organic matter has been trapped for this long, B) it is VERY hot in there now or recently, or C) there's catalytic chemistry going on in its subsurface ocean -- the same sort of proto-life chemistry that ended up producing us. And the wonderful thing about Enceladus's geysers? They're spewing large amounts of that ocean into space -- enough to coat other moons, enough to make it the moon in the solar system, enough to create a major enough ring around Saturn that makes Saturn's magnetic field lag behind it's rotation. We don't have to drill to see what's in there; a lander could pick up the stuff straight from the surface.
Parent
50 years of space exploration, in one sentence (Score:3, Interesting)
A few people may eventually make it out there, but at great cost and nothing that can be called "colonization" or "humanity's escape from cataclysm."
Bravo. I think in one sentence you just summed up ~50 years of space "exploration."
The best part of it? The people who have made out like bandits (telecommunications/entertainment companies, defense contractors which "do" everything NASA needs done and built all the satellites lofted into space and the missiles that thankfully haven't been) are liable to
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You are an asshole.
Just because right now we can't snap our fingers and be on Mars, or out of the solar system, doesn't mean we should give up and never try. Because then we certainly won't ever leave this rock. No one thinks that building a spaceport in NM means we'll all be spending our summers in the Cassini Division sipping space martinis. But humanity doesn't end with our generation (hopefull
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As has been pointed out in the article, this is a largely undeveloped part of the USA where the dot-com bubble/bust/recovery never even happened at all. By all accounts it is a pretty sleepy part of America
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Quite right. Maintaining a spaceport or the R&D facilities that are sure to spring up around it isn't going to generate any jobs