The three-story terminal and hangar facility, the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space, seen here from the north, is designed to blend into the landscape.
Virgin Galactic customers will enter the Gateway to Space through a walkway in the western portion of the building. Credit: Spaceport America
8-by-10 color glossies of different kinds of technologies
from all over the world for reusable launch vehicles [for
the Ansari X Prize competition],” Homans said. “And as
I had it out there and saw this description of the X Prize
Cup, it just hit me that this is what the beginning of a
new industry looks like. We realized if we are going to
claim the right to help give birth to this new industry,
we have to win the right to hold the X Prize Cup.”
New Mexico’s was one of four proposals submitted
for hosting the X Prize Cup. In May 2004, New Mexico
was selected over Florida, California, and Oklahoma.
“It took many years of environmental studies and
technical feasibility safety studies to prove that inland
launch would be safe,” Lee said. “Those original studies
were done for the single-stage-to-orbit [VentureStar]
program and laid the technical basis ... to propose to
the X Prize Foundation to host the X Prize Cup and to
base Spaceport America out of the Las Cruces area.”
Defining the first competition, raising prize money,
and allowing development time for competitors would
take time, but Diamandis wanted to start encouraging
public interest more quickly. A preliminary event, the
Countdown to the X Prize Cup, featured exhibits and
demonstrations of existing technologies in October
2005 in