New Mexico’s Sad Bet on Space Exploration
Soon after departing the small resort town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the video monitors on the bus come to life. Stars glitter in the night sky, a mystical flute soundtrack lilts, and a narrator’s voice intones: “All that you see around you was at the bottom of the sea.” The Conquistadors named the flat desert basin that formed after the sea receded Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead Man. As the bus lumbers through it, the narrator chronicles humanity’s fixation with the mysteries of the sky.
This is the road to Spaceport America, which bills itself as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport.” But to believe the tourist-bus video, it’s not just a dormant industrial park erected with the promise of economic revitalization. It’s the latest stop in humankind’s ageless reach for the stars.
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 in the project, its success or failure might have broad impact on private space travel.
A is only the latest entry in a triumphant time line
