The frontier of commercial spaceflight, which opened when NASA’s shuttle program ended this month, is taking shape in an unfinished assembly of metal, glass and concrete that resembles a rust-colored stingray burrowed halfway into New Mexico’s desert. “Spaceport America” bills itself online as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” and will be the official home of Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s venture that proposes to take tourists into suborbital space. It’s about 75 miles southwest of the Trinity atomic-bomb test site where the U.S. ushered in the nuclear age 66 years ago.
It’s even closer to the mobile home of Florita Munoz in Rincon, New Mexico. Munoz, 69, says she has little regard for this latest attempt to enter a new era. The 4-year-old project has already cost her state, the 10th poorest in the U.S., $209 million in public money. It’s at least nine months behind schedule and its director says it won’t generate as many jobs as backers once claimed.
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