Welcome to 21st century for world's first commercial spaceport!

William Atkins
Sunday, 21 June 2009 18:21

Science - Space

After the ceremony, construction begins in earnest with a 10,000-foot (3,000-meter) runway, followed by a terminal and hangar facility, all scheduled to be constructed in 2009 with a completion date of about eighteen months from now.

The construction is headed by Foster and Partners.

The YouTube video of the groundbreaking event is seen at Ground Broken on Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic, headed by Sir Richard Branson, will, initially, use Spaceport America to send spaceflight tourists into suborbital space at a cost of about $200,000 per ride.

Branson is paying over $300 million for the development of his new suborbital system consisting of a series of SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and two WhiteKnightTwo launch vehicles, both being developed and constructed by Scaled Composites.

The WhiteKnightTwo launching vehicles will take the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft from launch to about 18 kilometers (11 miles) above Earth. The rocket-powered spacecraft then separates from its mother ship and completes the trip to space, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth.

Test flights are scheduled for 2009 and 2010, with the first commercial flight scheduled sometime in 2011.

Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, says that about 300 reservations have already been made for the suborbital trips; that’s $60 million right off the bat.

For additional information and several videos, please go to the BBC News article Work starts on New Mexico spaceport.