Spaceport America Relay Race Features an Amazing 200 Mile Course Along the Historic Rio Grande River from Texas to New Mexico, Spaceport America
“Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport located in southern New Mexico in the USA, today announced that, in collaboration with relay racing specialists MH Enterprises LLC, the Spaceport America Crew will host and support a two-day, 200 mile, relay race event.”
Spaceport America, Wikipedia
“As of August 2012, Spaceport America is substantially complete and the cost of the entire project was $209 million. … In May 2015, budgetary details made public revealed that the substantially unused spaceport has an annual deficit that has been running approximately US$500,000, with the deficit being made up by state taxpayers. The primary planned revenue in the times of delayed operations by Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, with limited operations by other minor tenants, is local tax revenue, paid by the taxpayers of Sierra and Dona Ana counties.”

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11 replies on “Will Someone Please Start Launching Rocketships at Spaceport America”

    1. The one mistake they made was buying into the hype of the failed Ansari X-Prize. The facility is well positioned for both suborbital and orbital launch once folks make the transition in thinking from ELV to TSTO RLVs.

        1. Perhaps I should make that last sentence clearer.

          Because the only means of placing payloads into orbit to date have been ELVs requiring their launch facilities to be located on coastlines so the boosters could be dumped in the ocean that is the current mindset.

          As reusable boosters go into service (F9, New Glenn) this paradigm will change and the advantages of launching from an inland site will gain favor.

          In terms of Spaceport America, for Reusable Boosters, it has the advantage of a high altitude (better performance), a dry environment (less corrosion, more important when boosters are reused), more land area (more launch pad), better, more stable weather (less launch delays) and better opportunities for booster recovery on land down range (no rocking barges or delays to to high waves). All enable more efficient, profitable launch operations for RLVs.

          1. I wouldn’t take that too far. 5000 feet isn’t really “high altitude” as far as rockets are concerned. Weather conditions are not more stable (e.g. the monsoon season in Arizona, with strong thunder storms frequently coming and going over a few hours, or the radical changes in weather we can get in Colorado every five or ten days.) Overland flight of the first stage has advantages for recovery, but it also can mean overf light of inhabited area. That’s a serious safety issue. What I would say is that recoverable boosters let you eliminate one constraint on the launch site (an ocean down track) and that lets you pick a site which is a better choice for all the other constraints.

          2. If I recall the 1990’s study for the SRS is was an additional 1-2 percent in payload. Not much but when you are super chilling your LOX every little bit helps.

            Yes, Spaceport America more stable. Southern Florida has more thunderstorms than any other part of the country. And Spaceport America is not as unstable as the Front Range of Colorado, I only recall one major snowstorm in the years I lived there. The Monsoon Season is also not the problem you think. The storms hit in the late afternoon and you see them building for hours before hand. Also the 300+ days of suitable flying weather is based on 70 years of experience and records at WSMR, not guesses.

            As for overflight of inhabited area, the first 100 miles or so are over WSMR which is uninhabited. Plus folks tend to forget WSMR has been doing rockets off range since the 1950’s with zero causalities. Its not something new.

  4. What has Virgin Galactic been up to lately? I heard they were building a new SpaceShipTwo but that was quite a while back.

    1. VG is currently testing their new space ship Unity, which replaces Enterprise(crashed Oct 14). Earliest possible service date: 2017.

      I give credit to Richard Branson for not giving up.

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