Spaceport race is going global

Battle of the spaceports
Rutan leaves no doubt that he’s working hard to make good on delivering a fleet of Virgin Galactic spaceliners. There’s also certainty in his voice that suborbital flight by paying patrons is near at hand.

"I strongly believe that you’re going to see within the next few years — certainly within a decade — proof that it is indeed very affordable and very safe," Rutan said at the International Space Development Conference held earlier this month. "There’s going to be some cool things that you can do there," he added, with the suborbital passenger market far larger than most suspect.

Oddly, spaceports are popping up but have nothing to fly, Rutan noted, with investments spurred by very little information. "It’s almost humorous to watch the worldwide battle of the spaceports … they’re everywhere."

That is a very comforting fact, Rutan continued. There’s also a message there, he said: Given spaceliners that are robust, affordable and safe enough to fly the public, "other money that will be needed will appear in front of our face immediately … and I think that’s pretty cool."

Rutan has predicted big things ahead for the Mojave Spaceport.

As reported in the Mojave Desert News, Rutan recently said that "significant infrastructure" will be erected at Mojave to handle the space tourism business, including new spaceliner assembly facilities to be built within the next few months.

Adding a bit of competitive bite to his remarks, Rutan said that New Mexico may be good for military space operations, "but it’s not good for us … we want our passengers to see the ocean," rather than just desert on their flights, the Mojave Desert News reported.

Preliminary guesstimate
Meanwhile, in New Mexico, several design teams have made their bids to scope out what the state’s $225 million spaceport will look like. It will be built 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Las Cruces and 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Truth or Consequences — an area near Upham selected due to its low population density, uncongested airspace and high elevation.

The New Mexico spaceport is already gearing up to carry out its first rocket launches, albeit unpiloted, from the site this year.

"Our site activation process is nearing completion at the temporary launch complex in New Mexico. Everything is progressing smoothly," said Jerry Larson, president of Connecticut-based UP Aerospace, which is readying an inaugural suborbital rocket blastoff from the New Mexico spaceport grounds. The rocket for that first flight is in final assembly and will soon be transported to the spaceport, he told Space.com.

"Our customers are performing final checkouts of their payloads and experiments prior to their integration with the vehicle," Larson said. "We’re right on schedule for the multiple space launches that we have scheduled for this year."

According to New Mexico planners, their eagerness to build a Southwest Regional Spaceport is driven in part to support major near-term markets — to be served by cluster corporations — that engage in several money-making activities, such as:

• The emerging commercial space tourism sector, including operations of Virgin Galactic.
• NASA contracts for international space station commercial cargo and crew resupply services.
• Proposed low-altitude racing competitions, such as those sponsored by the Rocket Racing League.
• Evolving demand for low-cost human-rated reusable launch vehicles and rocket-powered racing aircraft.

One preliminary guesstimate has suggested that the annual economic impact spurred by a Southwest Regional Spaceport in 2020 could be in excess of $750 million in total revenues, and exceed 3,500 jobs — including all commercial space cluster space transportation services and manufacturing activities, as well as tourism-related visitor spending.

Polarization of spaceport providers
Derek Webber, Washington director of Spaceport Associates, has taken a hard look at spaceport types. He makes the case that it is probably not a workable plan to attempt to cover all markets with a single spaceport.

"There is emerging a polarization of spaceport providers," Webber observed.

"Throughout the world, the already-established government spaceports are likely to continue to provide expendable launch vehicle services to government, military and some commercial users," Webber explained. "Meanwhile, new commercial spaceports are emerging that will focus primarily on space tourism — both suborbital and orbital — and will thereby support the development of the reusable launch vehicle mode of spaceflight."

It seems unlikely, Webber said, that a single, all-inclusive type of spaceport will be able to handle satisfactorily all the diverse kinds of spaceport business.

Fields of dreams, fantasy traffic models
Anybody engaged in the new spaceport boom should learn the lessons from the first one, said Thomas Matula of the School of Business at the University of Houston at Victoria.

Matula explained at the recent space development conference that the first wave of spaceports occurred in 1989-1999. Those "fields of dreams," he said, were stirred up by such government projects as the Delta Clipper-Experimental (DC-X), the failed NASA-industry single-stage-to-orbit VentureStar program, and the privately backed Kistler rocket.

Eventually, reality set in, Matula stated. Often spaceports focused on single firms, so when the firm failed, so did the spaceport. Those backing spaceports didn’t ask the "hard" questions, he said, such as, what is the real demand for launch services? Did the launch firms really have viable business models? Are the proposed launch vehicles technically feasible?

Matula said this time around, his counsel to spaceport proponents is that they must craft a realistic business model. Spaceports are business incubators, not transportation facilities. Start small and expand as needed, leveraging existing facilities before building new ones. Ask the hard questions about markets, revenues and viability of launch firms, he said.

Above all, keep expectations down to earth and avoid fantasy traffic models, Matula advised.

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