Building a better spaceport

The idea of a New Mexico spaceport was first proposed 15 years ago. Thanks to breakthroughs in technology, space travel is much more affordable and space is all the more accessible, Homans said. "What we’ve been doing is waiting for the industry. And that industry arrived on our watch."

The basic infrastructure of a spaceport is fairly conventional, Homans said. Roads, water, power, as well as runways and vertical launch facilities. Spaceports already dot the world, from Russia, China, French Guiana to several such facilities here in the United States.

"It doesn’t seem to me that the infrastructure of the spaceport is what is revolutionary and different," Homans advised. "It’s the vehicles that fly from the spaceport that will be revolutionary and different."

Still, there are some practical issues ahead.

"We need to build enough to accommodate the industry that is there now ... and to stay a little bit ahead of it," Homans noted. The key is not to blueprint some grandiose vision trying to second-guess technology breakthroughs, he said.

Expandable and responsive
The spaceport must be designed and built to be easily expandable and responsive to the industry as it emerges, Homans added. "That’s the challenge, I think. Not to get carried away from the beginning."

For example, Virgin Galactic’s suborbital passenger operations will make use of a super-huge version of the Scaled Composites White Knight carrier craft. That aircraft design was fabricated to tote the SpaceShipOne rocket plane up to release altitude for its trio of record-setting suborbital hops.

At the New Mexico spaceport, a lengthy and wide runway with a certain amount of reinforcement and strength to it will be required to handle White Knight 2 suborbital runs conducted by Virgin Galactic.

Looking into the future of New Mexico’s spaceport — out five to ten years — air-launches of Earth-orbit bound spaceships would call for a beefed up runway. "We don’t want to go back and rip up runway. We want to adapt it to the new technology," Homans said.

Patti Grace Smith, the FAA’s Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation said time will tell how distinctive New Mexico’s spaceport proves to be.

"In a number of ways, it’s already unique. It clearly has the governor’s full support. The legislature is engaged. Other prominent leaders have spoken well of it. Community interest is high, and it has gained national, even international, attention," Smith told SPACE.com.

Something this new will continue to generate plenty of discussion. It’s exciting," Smith explained. "Projects involving so many people and issues will face questions ... nothing wrong with questions. That’s why people want to go into space in the first place, in search of answers for science, for service, and for themselves."

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