Spaceport America Loses $1.7 Million Due To Virgin Galactic Delays

An anonymous reader writes "Officials of New Mexico's Spaceport Authority were grilled by lawmakers about the now vacant Spaceport America following the deadly crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. The spaceport was built as a hub for commercial space flights. Its immediate future is uncertain since Virgin Galactic has indefinitely pushed back the launch date of its space tourism flights. From the article: "Christine Anderson, the authority's executive director, learned last week that she might have to do so one legislator at a time. Anderson was called out by Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, for handing members of an interim legislative finance committee a presentation filled mostly with photographs. Lundstrom and other lawmakers wanted hard numbers and more details about what plan the authority has to get past the Virgin Galactic mishap and get the taxpayer-financed spaceport off the ground. 'It just made all of us look like idiots, like we don't do our homework,' Anderson said. 'That's not the case whatsoever.'"

If you work on the bleeding edge...

[TWX]

...you get sliced from time to time.

While I commend New Mexico for their efforts toward making it possible to push the limits, this was bound to happen. On top of that, if they're balking at $1.7 million , how do they feel about their other budget line-items, like their schools that probably exceed a couple- billion dollars spent?

I don't know New Mexico's budget off the top of my head, but I do know that in my state, the largest school district's budget is somewhere between $600 and $700 million dollars, for about 65,000 students. There are upwards of a hundred school districts, and the education budget is something like 70% of the state's annual expenditure. $1.7 million dollars on the scale of a state budget is almost down to rounding-error money.

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[cavreader]

A couple of things from the article. The lawmakers already look like idiots to anyone with a pulse. 1.7 million dollars is an insignificant rounding error when it comes to government spending. If there was a shred of real concern about the welfare of the country and it's citizens or a smidgen of honor in evidence every single congressman and representative would have turned in their immediate resignations and proposed special elections where anyone previously holding any electoral position is barred from r

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[ottawanker]

I'd rather have the $9,230.77 to $10,769.23 a year spent per student. A nice little $200,000 nest egg when I was 16 wouldn't have been too bad.

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[TWX]

You really have no idea how governments solicit corporations to their areas, do you?

Nowadays, corporations look for the most favorable places to operate. That could be a place that's desirable to live in, a place with a large population that's qualified to do the work, a place with favorable laws that make land-use or permitting easier, or a place with favorable tax laws that make it inexpensive.

New Mexico has some really beautiful places like Ruidoso, but it also has a lot of land that can't even be

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[serviscope_minor]

its cities aren't exactly known for being centers of modern popular culture,

Alburquerque maybe not, but Santa Fe is pretty nice. And there's skiing a short drive in winter from the town centre. And there's the chile. Once you taste that you can never leave again. Unless you wind up in Espanola by mistake, in which case you'll leave in a coffin.

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[savuporo]

I think your reply missed the point.
In this case, NM government tried to attract a class of businesses that doesn't really exist. After X-Prize win everyone was high on suborbital tourism and regular passenger services from multiple providers appeared to be magically around the corner to many, mostly to a bunch of talking heads that have never built a real business by themselves.
10 years later, "suborbital industry" does not exist, apart from the sounding rockets that have always been flying. Every would be

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[TWX]

I didn't miss the point at all. The point is, New Mexico decided to play venture-capitalistsocialist after a fashion, and like lots of venture capital projects, this one hasn't panned-out. Now people are complaining over what's a fairly insignificant amount of money that might have paid-off had Virgin Galactic succeeded before now, and could have attracted more space-faring business. New Mexico wanted the American version of the Baikonur Cosmodrome to be in their state; they've got the land for it and fo

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[savuporo]

You generally aren't supposed to play that much of a VC or blackjack with public money. Could as well build a unicorn zoo and cold fusion powered monorails with the expectation that someone will eventually bring unicorns and cold fusion.

Creating business incentives like tax breaks is one thing, because real money gets involved if there is actual business happening. Massive infrastructure investments for business and technology that doesn't exist yet is a whole different level.

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[TWX]

There's a college and city partnership "Research Park", a full square-mile of business area, near me. They are used as a tech incubator, giving extremely reasonable rent to student and post-graduate business ventures and other tech ventures- significant E-ink research and the development of the screens for those old Motorola Razr V3 flip phones happened here.

I don't look at this spaceport as being really any different.

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[savuporo]

I have tech parks everywhere around here ( sf bay area ). All of them have tons of business or activity happening. As a startup dude, you actually have to fight for space, its that busy. You build a tech park here, you are guaranteed to have people in there, creating businesses, making money and spurring economic development - paying everything back in taxes.

This spaceport in NM doesn't do any of that.

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[TWX]

And there are several business parks around here that are empty, with fully paved streets and services in the ground waiting for buildings to hook up to. They end up being places for informal 1/4-mile drags for a couple of passes before the driver bails so to avoid the cops.

Makes sense

[sunking2]

Despite the typical 'government is acting bad' attitude that persists here it is a valid question. NM, one of the poorest stats in the country, levied taxes specifically to support this. Now the whole thing is in question. VGs future is in question despite what they are telling the press. And they are at least 5, probably closer to 10 years behind schedule. The question of continued costs and funding is valid.

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[Required Snark]

Here's an in depth article specifically addressing this issue: Failure to Launch [buzzfeed.com]. It was published in March this year, five months before the Virgin Galactic crash. It painted a pretty grim picture then, so obviously things are even more dire now.

Some quotes.

In the absence of Galactic operations, the only passengers who have lifted off from Spaceport America are the cremated remains of people whose families have paid UP Aerospace to launch their dead loved ones on a final joyride.

Speaking about Richard B

Why?

[itzly]

Why is the government even involved in this ?

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[itzly]

At least regular airports serve an economic function. This is just a hobby for rich people.

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[Carewolf]

At least regular airports serve an economic function. This is just a hobby for rich people.

True, but making space tech more widely used would push technology and make space research cheaper.

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[itzly]

There's barely any useful application of suborbital technology in real space. If anything, it's a big step backwards, even though they have nice new materials and a high gloss paint job.

Delays?

[joh]

Not unheard of in such things, really. If you're not prepared to push through some bad times, forget about it. Either push on or leave it. I still think VG is hardly more than a stunt for the rich (and a dangerous one too) but you're not going to dunk even your toes into space without running into problems now and then, often producing lots of debris... and costs.

single source company town

[k6mfw]

Seems to me obviously Spaceport has only one company. If Dallas Airport had only one airline that flew only one type of airplane, and if structural failure accident occurred, the entire airport will be shutdown for a long time.