One Step Closer To Spaceport America

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.'"

200k for a flight

[Chris Burke]

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.

Re:finally

[Rei]

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.

50 years of space exploration, in one sentence

[SuperBanana]

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 be the only ones to do so.

Why? Orbital junk. Pretty soon, we will be trapped by the trash floating around the planet, and the "backup plan" for humanity (ie colonizing other planets) will be impossible.

Right around the same time the environment undergoes rapid, cataclysmic changes...

Re:200k for a flight

[oldwindways]

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 operational ceiling of roughly 20km [wikipedia.org], while Virgin Spaceships are planned to climb to 140km [bbc.co.uk]) , and overall "WOW factor", I'd say that $200K is about the right amount for such an experience.

Theme Park

[jordipg]

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 travel.

For that reason, I think that Branson's space port will emerge as nothing more than a tourist-trap theme park in sunny New Mexico, with a sparsely manned "launch" once every three months. If it ever opens. And the denizens of sunny Dona Ana will stand to gain a bit, but their town will be transformed into a novelty town. Maybe some people want this...? I certainly wouldn't.

Re:Pie In The Sky, Way Up In The Sky

[geekoid]

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?

Do the "critics" RTFA?

[caywen]

"Supporters of the new tax say the spaceport will bring thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in space tourism revenue to the area.

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?

Re:50 years of space exploration, in one sentence

[Chmcginn]

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?

Re:Physical limitations

[Chmcginn]

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 metric.

When one person says "that's impossible, and always will be", it's difficult to argue against. Potential energy is pretty much the baseline - if that says it's impossible, then it always will be. (Unless you figure out how to violate the conservation of energy,mass, or momentum. But that's cheating.) Otherwise, it's very hard to say.

For instance, a hypothetical space elevator. I know, this is not immediately related to a spaceport, beyond needing the facilities to launch the anchor satelitte from. In this case, you're using a standard electric motor to add the potential energy for the first leg of the trip. In the correct running conditions, electric motors are better than 50% efficient. Three steps, a 50% effecient process means you're looking about about 1E11 J for a 100kg object to mars. That's still better than a 1kg object to orbit with our current technology.

New Mexico a great place for Virgin Galactic

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who don't know Southern New Mexico is the birth place of space flight and military expertise in the United States. After World War II many Germen scientist moved here and White Sands Missile Range was born; the biggest land based testing range for missile and rocket technology in the US. New Mexico State University is an engineering power house and lots of engineering students will probably have plenty of opportunities to learn and work with Virgin Galactic while they are attending school . A reason Virgin Galactic is here is because of the rocket/missile expertise that exists in the area. Holloman Air force Base is also in the area where the F-117 is based and the future home of the F/A-22. NASA also has a huge testing facility here. If you want to launch rockets this is the place to do it.

Re:Straw-man arguments and gentrification

[SEE]

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 County, gentrifying is a total waste of money.

By the way, New Mexico limits residential property tax assessment increases to 3% per annum, provided there isn't a sale of the land. It'll take 38 years for the assessment of any home in the area to triple underneath the owner . . . which will happen in any case because that'll be just fast enough to keep up with the dollar's inflation rate.