Local News RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail StoryMojave still mecca of space race
New Mexico may be front-runner in commercial effort, but Kern not letting up on throttle, either
| Friday, Sep 22 2006 10:15 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Sep 22 2006 10:19 PM
New Mexico has earmarked $100 million to support the space tourism industry in that southwestern state.
Our readers recommend:
Loading Stories
To view video for this story
please update your Flash player
As a result, construction is under way on a $200 million spaceport that will host Virgin Galactic, the most prominent player and the apparent front-runner in the commercial space race.
But what about California?
Mojave Airport and Spaceport in eastern Kern County is where it all started. Just two years ago, Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne captured the world's spotlight when the rocketplane became the first privately built vessel to carry a human to the edge of space.
Is New Mexico stealing our thunder rockets?
Not a chance, says Mojave Airport and Spaceport General Manager Stu Witt.
While Witt applauds the New Mexicans for making things happen and for getting state government to recognize the potential economic and scientific benefits of commercial space flight, he has held all along that Mojave maintains an edge, that cutting-edge research and testing continues, mostly under the radar, at the east Kern facility.
The very ships that will carry tourists on those future suborbital thrill rides are being developed in Mojave, not New Mexico. The research, development, testing and certification of those spaceships is contracted through Mojave's own Scaled Composites.
Besides, other endeavors in Mojave are generating excitement, even if they're not making headlines.
Mojave-based XCOR Aerospace is developing a two-person, ground-launched suborbital rocketplane called Xerus, said XCOR spokesman James Busby.
Ask Busby and he'll tell you: Mojave is where it's at.
"Absolutely, it will happen in Mojave," he said, referring to the development of a thriving space tourism industry. "And it will be a lot sooner than 20 years."
XCOR doesn't like to talk about what's going to happen, Busby said. The experience of Rotary Rocket, a Mojave-based company that had grand ideas but ended up coming apart financially several years ago, is a cautionary tale. And some of XCOR's principals came directly from Rotary.
"We're actively testing rocket engines," Busby said. "We have almost tripled our employment numbers at XCOR. That says a lot about what's happening here."
If you have your eye on a trip to the blackness of space, don't look for flights into orbit right away. Like SpaceShipOne's famous flights, Virgin Galactic's and most other commercial endeavors involve strictly "suborbital" flights that will carry space tourists close to 70 miles above the earth. Once there, they will see the stars like never before, experience a short period of weightlessness and then return to Earth armed with a story that will surely captivate the guests at any cocktail party.
But Randa Milliron, the chief executive and co-founder of Mojave-based Interorbital Systems, says her lean and mean 12-person company is not interested in providing short flights to suborbital space. Instead, Interorbital is developing low-cost manned and unmanned orbital launch vehicles for commercial and governmental applications. These more conventional rockets are designed to be launched from land or from the ocean using a technique called "floating launch."
"It's basically going to blow away the X Prize," Milliron said.
Besides the development of a 30-foot rocket to carry a new generation of "micro-satellites" into earth orbit, the company also plans to build a much larger six-person rocket that will offer wealthy space tourists "a seven-day orbital experience, not just an up-and-down 15-minute flight," Milliron said.
The cost? Two million smackers. But those with some extra cash on hand -- and a lot of faith in Interorbital -- can book a ticket now at $250,000. The money will be used to fund the current research and development, and the full purchase will be refunded when and if the firm gets up in the air and begins selling full-price fares.
Two people already have reserved those early seats, the CEO said.
Skeptical? Milliron doesn't blame you.
"As well you should be," she said. "There's a lot of guys out there with Web sites -- and that's all they're going to have."