Spaceport America and ISPCS Roundup

Buzz Aldrin (left) speaks to members of the welcoming committee as Richard Branson stands behind him. NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver (red sweater) talks with Pat Hynes of thee New Mexico Space Grant Consortium.

I’ve returned home from the blue sky vistas of New Mexico to Sunnyvale, which is not living up to its name (it’s pouring rain at the moment). Still, the mood is buoyant here as the San Francisco Giants head to the World Series. (Not quite as a good a day for someone who grew up rooting for the Phillies. The sole saving grace is that I was in the air at the time and didn’t watch it live.)

But, enough digression. The ISPCS was an excellent conference, bigger and better attended than any previous one. All the major players were there. And the mood was upbeat. The stars seem to have finally aligned: a maturing commercial sector bolstered by new investments, a business-friendly approach by the U.S. government, and champions within the upper reaches of NASA. Not perfect — but probably as good as one can hope.

Given the buoyant atmosphere, it was easy to look out over the next decade and imagine a space program that would radically different from the one today. Space would be open, commercialized and profitable. Providing, of course, that all parties can actually execute on their parts of the expansive vision.

The runway dedication on Friday was a ceremony that was uniquely Richard Branson. The Virgin Group is light years ahead of anyone else in commercial space today. In fact, their only rival in creating picture perfect spectaculars  might be Disney. I hope Virgin’s rivals were watching and learning.

The spaceport is in the high desert country, 4605 feet in elevation, on a flat plain bordered by mountains and the White Sands Missile Range.My first thought was that we had arrived in the Middle of Nowhere: Adjacent.  Or, as my colleague Jeff Foust remarked, the suburbs of nowhere.

In his remarks, Branson talked of how much he looked forward to flying from such a beautiful location. The dedication day — with its blue skies, scattered white clouds and cool temperatures — certainly lived up to his words. It won’t always be that way, of course. The desert being…well…the desert, extreme heat and violent weather will no doubt make operations challenging on certain days. But not on that day.

While almost everyone else came to the spaceport on buses that took the long route up from Las Cruces, Sir Richard came from above. His private jet buzzed the spaceport before touching down before a crowd of about 600. The plane stopped at the end of the taxiway, the door open, and down the stairs came Branson, Gov. Bill Richardson, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and other high officials.

There to greet them was a delegation of local, state and federal officials whose highest ranking member was NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. They had walked down the long taxiway to greet the British billionaire and Democratic governor who had worked together to put a $200 million spaceport in the middle of ranch land in a state primarily know for military space efforts.

The symbolism was clear — NASA is now going to the private sector, and the nexus of space is beginning to migrate west from Washington and Florida to obscure Westerns locations like Upham, Mojave and Rockwall. The tectonic shifts that are rolling through the American space program were there for all to see.