strategic plan, and business plan. I went to Washington
to speak with [New Mexico] Senator [Pete] Domenici’s
staff about what the spaceport could mean for the
economic development of southern New Mexico.” In
1992, a group of aerospace executives joined him to
form the Southwest Regional Spaceport Task Force to
explore the viability of an inland commercial spaceport
and its potential for economic development.
Meanwhile, in the early 1990s, the US government was
pursuing the development of a reusable single-stage-toorbit launch vehicle. The first prototype, the Delta Clipper
Experimental (DC-X) developed by McDonnell Douglas,
was flight tested at White Sands Missile Range between
1993 and 1996. After the DC-X test vehicle was disabled
on its final test landing, NASA officials decided to
pursue a different type of reusable single-stage-to-orbit
launch vehicle, VentureStar, developed by Lockheed
Martin. That company wanted to test its prototype at
a commercial spaceport rather than a government
facility. It requested bids for a launch site in 1998.
The New Mexico legislature had created an Office
of Space Commercialization in its Department of
Economic Development in 1994 to market and
promote the state’s space-related resources and
to coordinate, develop, and manage its regional
spaceport program. Its staff wrote a proposal for
hosting the VentureStar tests in southern New Mexico.
Fourteen states submitted bids for the VentureStar
program, but the project was cancelled in 2001, just
before site selection results were to be announced. In
January 2002, a Lockheed Martin official told members
of the New Mexico Space Commission, “You were
number one. Your proposal was head and shoulders
above the rest.” In response, the New Mexico Office
for Space Commercialization’s executive director,
Hanson Scott, said, “Even though there is no VentureStar
program, New Mexico has proven that we have a
strong team and other advantages from the point
of view of being evaluated by a major aerospace
company for a reusable space launch vehicle.”
During the 2002 election season, Bill Richardson was
campaigning to be governor of New Mexico, and Rick
Homans was his deputy campaign manager. “The first
that we heard the word spaceport was campaigning
in southern New Mexico,” Homans said. “We didn’t
really understand it all too well, but we heard a lot
of excitement, support, and enthusiasm about it.”
Richardson won the election and appointed Homans
the state’s Secretary of Economic Development. A
delegation from the Southwest Regional Spaceport Task
Force visited Homans within weeks after he took office
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, New Mexico Governor Bill
Richardson, and NMSA Chairman Rick Homans appeared at the 2010
dedication of the Spaceport America runway. Credit: Loretta Hall
in January 2003. “They laid out this concept of an inland
spaceport that would be very useful and workable
with the development of reusable launch vehicles and
reusable booster systems,” Homans said. “They said, in a
very visionary kind of way, ‘We’re not asking you to do
anything except to listen and to understand and to wait
for the right time. The biggest mistake would be to move
forward prematurely. We have to wait for this industry to
begin to emerge, and that’s when we go forward.’”
Commercial space events
To ensure a safe descent without excessive heating of the spacecraft,
SpaceShipTwo’s wings will rotate to a 60-degree angle. They will return to horizontal
before landing on the Spaceport America runway. Credit: Virgin Galactic
They didn’t have to wait long. In a few months, a
package arrived on Homans’ desk. In it was an invitation
to bid on being the host site for an annual competition
for commercial space vehicles. Competition was already
underway for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million award
for development, without government funding, of a
three-person reusable suborbital spacecraft. Twentysix teams were competing for that prize, and at most
one would win by the contest deadline of December
31, 2004. Peter Diamandis, organizer of the Ansari X
Prize, wanted to encourage contenders to continue
developing their concepts after that deadline, so he
created the X Prize Cup. It would be an annual event
held in the same place every year for commercial space
industry competitions and for stimulating public interest.
“As I opened this envelope and laid it out, there were
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