Tourists visit Spaceport, but no space rides yet!

New Mexico / DPA

While Spaceport America, which claims to be the world’s first commercial spaceport, hasn’t yet launched any tourists into space, ordinary mortals can already tour the site.
The futuristic building designed by rockstar architect Norman Foster is located in the middle of the desert in the US state of New Mexico. Here, it is hoped, rich tourists will soon blast off for short jaunts in outer space.
While it may look like the end of the world here, — dry, brown dirt with cattle grazing into the distance, criss-crossed by power lines — it’s actually a “geographic sweet spot,” according to tour director Mark Bleth.
“The spaceport is located at an altitude of 4,600 feet (1,400 meters), the population density is low, we have 300 days of sun and the White Sands Missile Range right next to the spaceport is the only permanent no-fly-zone in the USA apart from the White House.”
“Starts are practically possible at all times, and that makes this desert a perfect place for the spaceport.”
His company offers bus tours to the port starting from Truth or Consequences, the oddly named nearest town around 40 kilometres away.
It’s isolated country. The Spanish conquerers of the 16th and 17th century called the inhospitable area “Jornada del Muerto”, or “the Path of Death” and in 1945 the US government tested its first nuclear bomb here.
The idea of a commercial spaceport has been around for decades.
A licence was finally granted in 2008 and around 72 square kilometres of land in New Mexico was chosen for the project.
The 218 million dollars needed for the building of the port came from private and public funds and the building was completed in 2013.
Virgin Galactic, the space travel company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, currently has a 20-year lease on it.
The rent is only around 1 million dollars a year, which is also used to pay the dozen permanent employees of the spaceport.
Spaceships and rockets can take off vertically and horizontally from Spaceport America and the landing strip was recently extended again.
Several spaceships could fit inside the central hangar with its 6-metre-high doors.
“Anyone can come and rent the building for testing in anonymity,” says Bleth. “Somebody is actually testing right now, which is why we cannot enter the building.”
More than 500 people, including numerous celebrities, have already paid VirginGalactic for a 250,000-dollar ticket into space.
“They’re going to be astronauts, that’s a pretty exclusive club,” says Bleth.
“They’ll be allowed into the astronauts’ lounge on the third floor and they’ll have astronaut wings pinned to their chests just like NASA
astronauts.”
Branson himself has announced his intention of being on the first flight to the edge of space, together with his family.
But despite all the enthusiasm, space tourism hasn’t quite got off the ground yet.
Several other companies and billionaires have also been investing in the idea of space tourism and have invested millions in testing and development.
But so far they’ve only experienced setbacks and not one tourist has yet been into space.
The one success has been for US firm Space Adventures, which arranged a very expensive trip for several people to the International Space Station (ISS) with the cooperation of the US and Russian space agencies.
When he set up VirginGalactic in 2004, Branson said he hoped to see the first flights into space by 2008.
Several accidents and four deaths later that still hasn’t happened.
Branson recently announced the successor to the prototype spacecraft SpaceShipTwo, which crashed in 2014 killing one pilot, but there’s as yet no launch date for it.
VirginGalactic has also got competition from SpaceX, the company founded by Tesla boss Elon Musk, which also uses Spaceport America.
Musk has already been delivering cargo to the ISS with his Dragon spacecraft and one day hopes to see tourists go up in it.
Microsoft founder Paul Allen has also been investing money into space tourism with his Stratolaunch Systems company, as has Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently showed journalists around the headquarters of his new company Blue Origin.
It’s hoped the first tourists might be launched into space from Spaceport America in 2018.
“Most importantly it has to be safe,” says Bleth. But until then the port has to look for other sources of income, such as tours of the site, which cost 50 dollars per person.
Fashion and car companies have also used it for filming ads and motorbike riders have carried out speed tests on the landing strip.
There are even suggestions that a worldwide system of spaceports could be built, with rockets shooting between them carrying urgent goods – organs for example.
“The goal is to be self-sustainable and I believe that will happen,” says Bleth.
As Bleth speaks, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, despite the rarity of rain in the New Mexico desert.
The tour bus leaves Spaceport America via “Asteroid Beltway” and “Half Moon Street”, back towards
civilization.