Virgin Galactic to Build Space Port in New Mexico 275
aapold writes "Virgin Galactic today announced plans to build a $225 million space port in southern New Mexico. Richard Branson will meet with governor Bill Richardson Wednesday to unveil the plans. Virgin Galactic is the company leveraging Spaceship One which, as reported by Slashdot, claimed the Ansari X prize for commercial space flight."
Re:Wouldn't it be better... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes,
It is only you.
At present the only viable way to get into space is using rockets. Therefor we're going to need somewhere for the rockets to take off and land.
non-orbital (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Awesome (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good for Business? (Score:5, Informative)
noise pollution : No one is going to notice.. well, no HUMAN is going to notice. Between TorC (as everyone calls is) and Las Cruces.. there is a whole lot of NOTHING. Just miles and miles and miles of desert. Well, there are a couple of very small communities if you stay next to the interstate.
traffic problems : Non issue there is hardly any traffic now.. the road would be a little busier because peopel would have to live in TorC or Las Cruces that is a plus for both cities.
money that the populace argues would be better spent elsewhere : HAH! I take it you have never seen the area... Go 4 minutes outside the city limits of Las Cruces and you are IN the third world country within the USA. This will pump millions of MUCH NEEDED money into the area.
They have been waiting 10+ years for this. It is nice to see it finally happening. One section of Las Cruces even split off a few years back (~ '96-'97).. became incorperated and called temselves "spaceport City" because they were dead sure that a spaceport would be built by '99. By late '98 and early '99 they were out of money (they had to make a lot of improvements to fit the terms of becoming a city) and the residents dumped the idea and voted to become a 'burb of Las Cruces again and forget the whole incorperation thing.
Ugh. PHB-speak ahoy! (Score:5, Informative)
Whatever happened to the verb 'to use'? As in 'Virgin Galactic is the company using Spaceship One'.
Anyone who uses the word 'leverage' in any context where the concept of newton metres is absent, or as a verb in any context at all, deserves to be slapped about the face with a kipper until they're sorry.
Re:New Orleans would be better... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Careful there.... (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, Branson [wikipedia.org] is a businessman with a successful track record [wikipedia.org], and his personal fortune of approximately $5,300 million [wikipedia.org] would allow him to absorb the complete failure of this $225 million spaceport (although obviously no-one would want to lose that much money).
Michael
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that's correct, from the standpoint of safety. They can't afford to immolate too many people if one of these things crashes or explodes for some reason. The area south of T-or-C and north of Las Cruces is sparsely populated, mostly open area, and is bordered to the east by White Sands, and even further east by Roswell. I'm sure Virgin Galactic is hoping to lure the ET contingent. Anyway, they're trying to keep the insurance rates down.
NASA originally considered the White Sands area for launching the Apollo Saturn V, but decided it was too dangerous, as one Saturn V carried the destructive power of an atomic bomb. They did do engine testing for the Lunar Module and Service Module there.
And if you drive north of T-or-C to the small town of San Antonio, you can stop at the Owl Bar and Cafe for the best green chile cheeseburgers in all the world. [end shameless plug]
Re:As a Virgin North West Trains user (Score:5, Informative)
Centro: litter everywhere, dirty, run down looking, rude/bored and occasionally abusive ticket collectors, no information at all on delays, connections, no shop, no power points, toilets usually filthy
Virgin: generally clean - they have a cleaner on every train, toilets OK, on board shop, staff generally polite, friendly and cheerfull looking, good information about delays, transfers, connections etc etc
Richard Branson said he would introduce High Speed trains and no one really believed him but now they are in service and he has pretty much delivered what he promised he would.
Hardly (Score:3, Informative)
AND, people at MIT have built mass drivers, and used them on terra firma! And other people have thought about using them on the moon.
That's what your links say. Oh, and an offhand comment, that "SSI is conducting a feasibility study on the use of an aerostatically supported mass driver for terrestrial launch of bulk payloads." Just that sentence, nothing more.
The reaction force from the launch would be enormous, though--F=m*a, so take whatever acceleration you impart to the payload, discount it by the fraction of the payload's mass over the platform's mass, and that's the acceleration you impart to the platform. Doesn't sound too bad until you think about an aerostatically supported platform trying to launch things into predictable orbits while oscillating all over the place from the reaction force of the launches.
Just make it heavier, you say? Bigger energy cost to get it up there in the first place. Bigger problem if it fals. Also, those aerostats aren't going to last forever, so the increased mass will also be an increast maintenence cost. Or, maybe you'd like to put stabilizing thrusters on the platform? What would fuel them? How would you get the fuel up there?
Who would staff a platform at an altitude of 30 miles? How would you get them up and down? How much would you pay them, given the hazardous nature of the work?
Also, you want to send the payloads to the platforms on balloons. My understanding is that balloons are great for getting things to high-altitude, so long as the radial coordinate is the ony one you care about. If you want them at a particular spot in the sky (say, your platform), you'd have to use something more manoeuvrable.
NM (Score:5, Informative)
As for 3rd world, a couple of interesting facts (which might be outdated). NM has the highest school dropout rate and the highest PhD per capita. AND the bordor patrol has a station NORTH of Las Cruces. Putting it south of there would interfer with international commuters.
Re:Good for Business? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't it be better... (Score:2, Informative)
An X-port is where X connects to the land, where people stop using traditional land vehicles and start using X vehicles. A seaport connect the sea to the land, an airport connects the air to the land, and a spaceport connects space to the land.
A carport even works this way, although it is where walking people connect to the road system and thus would be better called a roadport.