LAS CRUCES, NM – A team of U.S. and British architects and designers, accompanied by officials from the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) and Virgin Galactic, will unveil the design renderings of Spaceport America at a press conference Tuesday, September 4, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Construction on the 100,000 square-foot hangar and terminal facility is scheduled to begin in 2008.

As has been said any number of times over the years, one of the biggest challenges facing any new company in the space industry, particularly those developing new launch vehicles, is not necessarily the technology but the financing (see “Opening wallets, closing windows”, The Space Review, April 30, 2007). Convincing skeptical investors that the technologies are ready, the potential markets are sufficiently large, and the regulatory issues addressable can be as difficult as the nuts-and-bolts of building the vehicle itself. It’s little surprise, then, that the ventures in the entrepreneurial “NewSpace” realm that have made the most progress to date are primarily those self-funded by a wealthy founder, from Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace to Elon Musk of SpaceX, among others.