Is a spaceport still in our future?

New Mexico Business Journal, Sept, 1996 by Larry Spohn

It has encountered turbulence in its plan to become a national space power, with one of the first, if not the first, commercial spaceports dedicated to launching and landing reusable launch vehicles.

The so-called RLVs are all the chatter in the space world. They're supposed to make space accessible, as in cheap, fast, reliable and safe. New Mexico thought it had the market cornered with its commitment from McDonnell Douglas Corporation to conduct its flight testing for NASA's X-33 prototype of the RLV here at White Sands Missile Range, near Las Cruces.

That's also the general vicinity of the proposed spaceport, which officials want to build early next decade north of Las Cruces, between Interstate 25 and the missile range.

McDonnell Douglas has been successfully testing its revolutionary DC-XA rocket at White Sands. Often compared to Buck Rogers's fictional spaceship, the DC-XA launches and lands vertically and it can hover and dance over terrain, much like a helicopter can.

The glitch in this space script: McDonnell Douglas's design may have been a little too futuristic and NASA picked Lockheed Martin for the X-33 prototype, a $1.2 billion job. Like the space shuttle, Lockheed's design launches vertically, but lands horizontally like a plane. Even in the space business, old ways die hard.

California, which has dominated the spacecraft business for decades, wins again. Lockheed will conduct its flight testing beginning in 1999 at Edwards Air Force Base. Some test flights also are planned for military bases in California, Utah and Montana. But unless New Mexico's Congressional delegation can convince Lockheed and NASA otherwise, test flights at White Sands are out. At least for now.

New Mexico space proponents see a silver lining in this dark cloud. Sure, they would have preferred to get a leg up on the commercial spaceport market by landing the X-33 test flights at White Sands. That would have put the state on the space map for something more than advanced military rocket testing. Ultimately, they could get both. Spaceport proponents say the primary target for the New Mexico spaceport is the RLV market, not the prototype X-33, which, after all, will be sub-orbital. It's the spacecraft that comes after the X-33 that's supposed to place, show and win, so proponents say they're still focused on the right stuff. They may be proved right.

The X-33 program, from New Mexico's perspective, always was more of an image thing, sort of like the bait and switch advertisers like to pull to sell the bigger, more expensive model. Landing the X-33 flight testing program would have been a major step toward breaking the lock that coastal states, like Florida and California, have had on launching payloads into space and laying the groundwork for a land-locked spaceport in New Mexico.

But everybody knew from the start that all three of the NASA bidders were Southern California-based and were going to build their X-33 version in a plant there. At issue for New Mexico was only where would the rocket get tested primarily.

Only McDonnell Douglas had promised to test at White Sands, saying among other things that it liked the state's commitment to building a spaceport around the turn of the century. But even that meant most of that big juicy NASA contract was going to get spent in California, actually building the X-33.

Spaceport pushers say their plan is a long-term strategy that aims to establish not only a spaceport, as a gateway to orbit, but also is an economic development center that will attract the aerospace infrastructure, which now is centered in Southern California.

They are, of course, talking about rocket building factories and rocket fuel plants, and also all of supporting businesses that flock to today's airports generating jobs, tax revenue and a robust economy. It seeks to build a broader economic future for the state out of the existing federal research and military base that now dominates the state's economy but is seen to be in jeopardy in the post Cold War.

The trick now, acknowledged spaceport commissioners, is to convince state leaders, from Governor Gary Johnson to the Legislature in January that this rosy picture still is real, that White Sands has space launching advantages that make it a natural.

Two events suggest it is. Within days of NASA's decision Lockheed Martin sent an X-33 project team member to the state's spaceport commission meeting. His message: New Mexico's at the top of the flight testing list for the reusable launch vehicle that presumably will be tackled by Lockheed after the X-33.

And, revived military interest in McDonnell Douglas' DC-XA for its unique capabilities to fly rapidly through space to any point on the earth and deploy troops or equipment like a helicopter can, landing vertically.

A defense appropriation that could enable future DC-XA testing at White Sands is in the 1997 budget. Meanwhile, the spaceport commission is preparing a legislative package that is expected to seek $10 million next year to begin the spaceport development process.