After Virgin Galactic test flight, different views of Spaceport America's future

LAS CRUCES – When Virgin Galactic completed its first test flight to space from New Mexico on May 22, some said it vindicated the dream that built Spaceport America. 

"I'm hoping that people will see that this is now a reality, not just a far-flung vision," spaceport director Scott McLaughlin remarked Saturday after the flight. "We are on our way to regular space tourism."

The passenger space plane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles on a rocket-powered flight reportedly hitting a top speed of Mach 3.

By U.S. standards, that made New Mexico the third state from which a crewed flight reached space. The federal space agency NASA considers the boundary of space to be 50 miles above sea level, while the measure used by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, a boundary known as the Kármán Line (for physicist and engineer Theodore von Kármán), is 62 miles.

It was also a milestone for the state's commercially licensed spaceport, built more than a decade ago with $220 million in public funds. Today, the spaceport reports 60 percent of its revenue is derived from leases and fees, but has continued to receive support from appropriations and local tax revenues as well.

It was a public project sold on Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's ambition to launch tourists and researchers on brief suborbital flights; but as delays to its realization stretched into years, competing storylines emerged about the spaceport: The story of New Mexico getting in on a new commercial space industry versus the story of an expensive boondoggle out in the desert. 

Triumph or boondoggle?

Proposals for a commercial space facility dated back to the 1990s, but in 2005 Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson paved the way with their joint announcement that Virgin would make New Mexico its world headquarters if the state built the world's first commercial spaceport. 

More: Virgin Galactic touches space over New Mexico

State lawmakers approved funding and initial construction took place between 2006 and 2012 on state land in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in Sierra County, near White Sands Missile Range. Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America also maintain separate office facilities in Las Cruces, over 50 miles south of the spaceport. 

Besides Virgin, the spaceport has three other tenants: UP Aerospace, SpinLaunch and HAPSMobile Aerovironment. Other companies, including Boeing and C6 Launch Systems among others, make use of its vertical launch area or other facilities. It also hosts an annual rocketry competition, the Spaceport America Cup, which is taking place this year as a virtual event. 

As years of delays have beset Virgin Galactic's enterprise, the spaceport has sought to expand its facilities and services to draw more revenue. 

In 2005, Branson predicted space travel for commercial passengers would begin in 2010. After a long series of delays, including a fatal crash over California's Mojave desert in 2014, Virgin began its final test phase 16 years after the Richardson-Branson announcement, with a flight last December that was safely aborted after a computer lost contact and halted the ignition of a rocket motor. 

That issue was rectified for the May 22 flight, which was observed by Branson and Richardson as well as current New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. 

Meanwhile, repairs are underway in the governance of the spaceport itself. 

While weathering disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority faced an investigation into alleged mismanagement and abuse of authority, which led to the firing of director Dan Hicks in October and McLaughlin's promotion as director in March. 

McLaughlin, who had previously served as the spaceport's business development director, has promised to widen the spaceport's customer base while continuing to support the vision of the spaceport as a hub for passengers to space. 

The spaceport is also facing a lawsuit by a former space systems engineer alleging she was paid less than male colleagues and discriminated against before being placed on leave without a proper investigation. 

Meanwhile, the NMSA, a public agency, is writing new bylaws and addressing how to meet its operating costs after an audit found the spaceport was improperly relying on local gross receipts taxes intended for repaying construction bonds issued to fund the spaceport's construction. The taxes are collected by Sierra and Doña Ana counties. 

More: County wants state to repay allegedly misspent spaceport tax revenue

'A new era' for Spaceport America

Richardson said Saturday's flight "marked the beginning of a new era" for the spaceport, which has faced skepticism over the years over its viability. 

"It’s taken a long time, but innovation and invention are not fast processes," Richardson continued via email. 

The former governor said Virgin Galactic's "big and bold vision" would pay off with hundreds of space flights per year, building a space tourism industry in the state creating jobs in neighboring communities and boosting economic activity by visitors. 

He even suggested it could "jump start" southern New Mexico's economy following the COVID-19 pandemic, although commercial passenger service is not expected to begin until 2022. 

"The Spaceport not only creates good-paying jobs, but it gives our state and our young students a hub for science education right here in New Mexico," Richardson continued. "It’s so exciting to think that New Mexico kids will grow up visiting the Spaceport, taking school trips there to learn about space and science, and witnessing human beings rocket into space from their own backyard.”

More: Spaceport America Cup returns as virtual event in 2021

Virgin Galactic reports it has 600 tickets reserved and, if the remaining test flights go well, commercial service and long-awaited revenue streams could commence next year. It has also contracted with NASA to fly research payloads, the Italian Air Force to fly astronauts in training, and is involved in research for faster point-to-point travel on Earth, including early development of a new high-speed aircraft. 

Meanwhile, at its Mojave production facility, the company recently unveiled its newest spacecraft as it plans to manufacture a fleet to fly hundreds of passengers annually. 

'The state has been hamstrung'

Earlier in May, a contingent of state lawmakers got a tour of Spaceport America, and among them was one of Virgin Galactic's prominent critics in Santa Fe: Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup.

"It's buzzing around there," Muñoz said.

In 2015, Muñoz filed a bill, which stalled in committee, that would have required the agency to draft a marketing plan and sell the spaceport. On Tuesday, he expressed satisfaction with some of the research and development underway at the facility by tenants other than Virgin Galactic. 

In particular, he saw promise in HAPSMobile Aerovironment's development of a solar-powered high-altitude platform system designed to extend mobile communications capability to rural and other underserved areas; and the centrifugal launch system underway at SpinLaunch.

"As we look to the future, I know there's a limited amount of people that are going to pay $250,000 to go up in space," Muñoz said, and then added a reference to Virgin's competitors in the race for suborbital tourism: "Space exploration is one of those things that's always cutting edge, and we're surpassed by SpaceX and everybody else nowadays."

Virgin had hoped to win "first mover" status but Blue Origin, a venture founded by Jeff Bezos, has scheduled a tourist flight on July 20, and Elon Musk's SpaceX is aiming to launch its founders and other passengers into space later this year. 

Muñoz said Virgin Galactic's 20-year lease of the spaceport "was designed so one-sided that the state has been hamstrung," and other tenants overshadowed by the spaceport's anchor tenant. 

"It's my understanding that they're going to go into some renegotiations now, which need to happen," he said, arguing that new lease terms should include Virgin paying more for developing its enterprise on state-built infrastructure, and making room for other customers. 

More: Spaceport welcomes Canadian satellite company

"For me, as a taxpayer and investor in the spaceport, if I could tell them to do one thing it would be to develop that aerospace research, get as many tenants in as we can, get Virgin Galactic to not control the entire thing, and make your lease at least fair," he said.

Citing the gross receipts tax issue, Muñoz called for the spaceport to enhance its rental and fee income and cover its operating budget, and to get going on $20 million in capital projects that were approved by lawmakers in 2019.

Those projects include a technology and reception center near the spaceport’s entrance, improvements to the spaceport’s vertical launch area, a new launch rail and repairs to the spaceport’s operations center, which suffered damage due to poor drainage work at the time of the building's construction and damage caused by the center's dome and building frame shifting in opposing directions. 

The NMSA authorized McLaughlin to proceed with requests for proposals at a December 2020 meeting, and on May 6 McLaughlin reported progress on RFPs or statements of work for all four. 

Muñoz said with improved revenue, capital improvements and a bigger customer base, the spaceport stood a chance to be an incubator of vital new technologies, whether Virgin Galactic realizes its vision or not. 

"We have an opportunity to make it fair and give us an opportunity for that research investment to allow more things to happen at the spaceport, and to really grow," he said. 

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.