Hundreds gather in Las Cruces on Thursday to celebrate construction of Spaceport America, which starts today with a groundbreaking ceremony
With contentious debates about how to fund Spaceport America behind them, government officials gathered at New Mexico State University Thursday evening for the first of three celebrations of the facility’s official groundbreaking.
Gov. Bill Richardson spoke at the celebration on the NMSU Horseshoe about the educational and economic development opportunities he predicts the spaceport will create in southern New Mexico.
“I want you to remember this day,” he told the hundreds of people in attendance. “… Today, we celebrate a new chapter.”
In his remarks, Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima said today’s groundbreaking ceremony will usher in a new era.
“Tomorrow is going to start a new space age,” he said Thursday.
The groundbreaking begins a $198 million construction project the state hopes to complete by late 2010. During Thursday’s event, Richardson thanked lawmakers for approving a chunk of the funding and specifically named three counties — Doña Ana, Sierra and Otero — which he thanked for pitching in with local tax increases.
The reality, however, is that Otero voters narrowly shot down a local tax increase proposal that would have helped fund the spaceport.
That wasn’t the only contentious point that was glossed over during Thursday’s celebration. Miyagishima was one of the few public officials in Doña Ana County to oppose the local tax increase here that will provide about 25 percent of the spaceport’s funding.
During his speech, Richardson called the county’s funding the “lynchpin” that propelled the spaceport from an idea to reality. Without the funding from Doña Ana County, construction on the spaceport would not be about to begin.
‘New Mexico thinks big’
But that’s all in the past. With today’s groundbreaking, Richardson said Thursday, “we will have built the foundation that New Mexico no longer thinks small. New Mexico thinks big.”
That was the theme of Thursday’s celebration. Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive officer, said several states courted the company, but New Mexico officials, led by Richardson, were the first and most persistent.
“The cooperation and the partnership that we’ve experienced in the last few years has been wonderful, and it’s what’s going to make this happen,” said Attenborough, whose company plans to ferry paying passengers into suborbital space from Spaceport America.
George Nield, an associate administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the fact that New Mexico has earned one of only a handful of commercial spaceport licenses in existence says something about the state.
“New Mexico has what it takes,” he said, adding that the spaceport will “represent one of the great adventures of the 21st Century.”
Nield told Attenborough that his company is “in the driver’s seat right now and you’re taking us to tomorrow land.”
“There are people right now from all over the world who are watching you in New Mexico,” Nield said. “They’re supporting you. They’re rooting for you.”
Watch the groundbreaking ceremony online
Media outlets from around the world were in Las Cruces for Thursday’s celebration. Many will also attend today’s groundbreaking at Upham, located about 40 miles northeast of Las Cruces.
The ceremony will be webcast live beginning at 11 a.m. on the spaceport’s Web site. The groundbreaking isn’t open to the public, but there’s another public celebration this morning in Truth or Consequences. Richardson and other officials will gather at Ralph Edwards Park in T or C beginning at 8 a.m.
Virgin Galactic also plans to fly WhiteKnightTwo — the aircraft it plans to use to carry its passenger-ferrying spaceship into the sky — over Las Cruces, T or C and Spaceport America sometime between 10 a.m. and noon if the weather allows it. Attenborough said Thursday that it will be the longest voyage yet for the aircraft, which is housed in Mojave, Calif.
In addition, he provided some new details about SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital spacecraft Virgin plans to use to carry passengers into space. He said it’s “pretty much ready to fly,” and awaiting testing in a hanger in Mojave. He said he hopes the spacecraft will take its first flight by the end of the year, and added that he is “pretty sure that it’s going to happen.”