THE LONG ROAD TO TOMORROW
(originally run: December 16, 2005)
The long and winding road
That leads to your door . . .
The Beatles, 1970
The road is actually fairly straight, for the most part,
although it certainly has its rises and dips, which causes it to bear an
uncanny resemblance to a rollercoaster ride if one takes it at a fast enough
speed. It is certainly fairly long some 24 miles from the freeway exit to the
destination of interest. It's a dusty road for now, anyway so one probably
doesn't want to have to travel behind someone else. And it's a road that this
author had the occasion to travel down this past Wednesday afternoon.
The road in question leads to the future site of the
Southwest Regional Spaceport, in the New Mexico desert between the small towns
of Upham and Engle, near the track of the famed Jornada del Muerto. At present
the site is little more than a barren patch of desert wasteland, but in the
mind's eye one can see that within the not-too-distant future this site will become
one of the premier locations where humanity meets the universe.
The road through time to the Spaceport has also been
long, but unlike its physical counterpart it has also been quite winding. In
some respects the journey began back in the 1940s, when expatriated German
rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun began launching V-2 rockets from the
nearby White Sands Proving Ground (now White Sands Missile Range). Based upon
this heritage and the missile-launching legacy of White Sands, and with the realization
that commercial spaceflight was an idea whose time had come, during the early
1990s a dedicated team of individuals this author among them began
advocating for the development of a commercial spaceport here in southern New
Mexico.
One program already in development at that time showcased
in a very visible manner the feasibility of such an idea. This was the Delta
Clipper Experimental (DC-X) prototype Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) rocket,
developed by McDonnell Douglas Aerospace under the Strategic Defense Initiative
although its principle designers William Gaubatz and former astronaut Pete
Conrad were clearly eyeing it as a prototype for an eventual commercial
vehicle. The DC-X performed several test flights from White Sands during the mid-1990s
before a maintenance error resulted in its demise during a landing pad accident
in 1996.
In the wake of the DC-X NASA initiated the X-33 program
in an effort to develop a fully reusable suborbital rocket, which was
eventually expected to lead to the development of a reusable commercial vehicle
capable of reaching orbit. The winning contractor for X-33, Lockheed Martin,
chose Edwards Air Force Base in California as the site of its test flights, but
subsequently chose New Mexico's proposed spaceport as the primary site for its
expected commercial vehicle, dubbed VentureStar. Unfortunately, the X-33
developed problems, particularly with its fuel tank, during its development
stages, and the entire program was cancelled in early 2001 before it had made any
test flights.
After additional false starts, such as the initiated,
then cancelled, Space Launch Initiative program, the tide shifted dramatically
in mid-2004 when the X-Prize Foundation announced that it had chosen New
Mexico's proposed spaceport as the site of its annual series of X-Prize Cup
competitions. The X-Prize itself, the brainchild of St. Louis businessman Peter
Diamandis, was an award of $10 million to the first private effort that could
launch a rocket vehicle carrying the weight equivalent of three people on two
suborbital flights within a two-week period; this prize was won by
California-based aviator Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites in October
2004.
The X-Prize Cup, which follows from the original X-Prize,
is meant to be a periodic series of competitive events that will showcase
commercially-developed spaceflight vehicles, with the ultimate goal of using
these as a springboard for the development of a full commercial space industry
that will eventually include the taking of paying passengers to space.
The initial X-Prize Cup event was an exhibition that was
held at the Las Cruces airport two months ago, and the next one or two such
events are also expected to be held at that location. However, with development
of the spaceport now scheduled to begin within the near future, subsequent
X-Prize Cup events are slated to be held there.
The X-Prize Foundation's commitment to the Southwest
Regional Spaceport has now brought other players as well to the scene,
including some of the contestants of the original X-Prize. One of these, the
British-based Starchaser Industries, is scheduled to make the first commercial
launch from the spaceport site in March 2006.
And now a new major player is on the scene. Following the
successful X-Prize winning flight last year, British entrepreneur Richard
Branson announced the formation of a new company, Virgin Galactic, whose goal
is to offer rides to space for paying passengers. At the ceremony at the
spaceport site which this author attended on Wednesday, Branson announced that
Virgin Galactic will be building its world headquarters at, and will be
operating out of, the Southwest Regional Spaceport. In addition to the
tremendous economic impact this effort this will bring to southern New Mexico,
it serves notice that New Mexico will be on the forefront of humanity's journey
to space.
So the long, winding road, begun so many years ago, is
reaching fruition at last. At the conclusion of Wednesday's ceremony some model
rockets were fired off by some area school children, and as this author began
the drive down the long, straight, dusty road towards home, he couldn't help
thinking that, while those rockets may not necessarily have been the first ever
launched from the spaceport site, they will certainly not be the last.
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