New Mexico's sad bet on space exploration

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New Mexico's sad bet on space exploration

Postby Jetranger » Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:16 pm

The Big New Mexico Flop , that cost Tax Payers and the state Hundreds of Millions thru more "Taxes" !!!

LINK : http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/new-mexicos-sad-bet-on-space-exploration/ar-BBJMHiY?li=BBnbfcN

Spaceport America lies about 20 miles southeast of Truth or Consequences, roughly 50 miles north of Las Cruces, and at a perpetually indeterminate moment in the near future.

Although the spaceport has been flight-worthy since 2010, the first launch by its anchor tenant, Virgin Galactic, still hasn’t taken off.

While the private space industry appears to be at a major turning point elsewhere in the world, its "impacts haven’t quite reached the small New Mexico cities banking on its future".

There aren’t many places where a spaceport like this, meant to service an international community, is feasible.

Given the state’s large and controversial investment the project, its success or failure might have broad impact on private space travel

The state paid for the "$220 million in construction costs with public funds", some of which came directly from neighboring Doña Ana and Sierra counties "via gross-receipts-tax increases".

Those "taxes are expected to deliver nearly $75 million by 2029".

In exchange, the locals long for economic opportunity.

They could use it; according to U.S. Census data, Sierra County has one of the lowest median household incomes of the 33 counties in the state of New Mexico

The only spacecraft we see on the tour is a model of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, glimpsed from a distance in an otherwise empty hangar. Even the spacecraft isn’t real !!!

Others, like Oklahoma’s Air and Space Port, seem to be even more like ghost towns than this one.

But New Mexico’s gambit suggests we are at the spaceport of the nation.

It doesn’t feel like the frontier of private space travel so much as a "movie set".

New Mexico’s "greatest export is our children"—we do a great job of giving them college degrees and "not giving them opportunities" in the state.

“the public has a right and a duty to be able to know what kind of return they’re getting on their investment.”


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Re: New Mexico's sad bet on space exploration

Postby ftldave » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:24 am

Private enterprise-based space flights like Virgin's project are certainly high risk, financially and safety-wise. But I would ask, if that same short-term "we shouldn't pay taxes for any big projects" attitude had been prevalent during NASA's early years, when one rocket after another was blowing up on the launch pads, would America have ever developed Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Shuttle? It's that same attitude that makes many of us believe that the USA is no longer capable of big projects, and that great era has passed. I remember when Gorbachev railed at the Soviet space engineers and said, "You blast billions of rubles into the cosmos with every launch!" That said, maybe it is, indeed, wiser to invest private and public funds for solving more of the problems here on earth: repairing schools, the infrastructure, healthcare, no matter how much we love the idea of exploring space, tourist rocket trips, the Moon again, Mars and such. Americans may well end up watching the Chinese do those things. Communist-controlled capitalism in China can still make decisive long-term investments. Maybe the USA cannot ... at least not successfully.
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