Bad rate, or Spaceport "America" ​​as an attempt by New Mexico to invest in space exploration

Source: Nigel Young / Foster and Partners

The America Spaceport was conceived as a way to invite a booming space industry to the southern deserts of New Mexico - now, unfortunately, this is not a “calm bay” on the road to space, but only a futuristic attraction for tourists.

Some time after leaving the small resort town of Truth-Or-Consequences, New Mexico , monitors come to life in a tour bus. On the screen, the night and the twinkling stars, the flute from the speakers quietly plays, and then a low voice begins the narration: "Everything that you see around you was once the bottom of the sea." Conquistadors called this desert Jornada del Muerto, “The Way of the Dead”. While we slowly roll along the road, the narrator entertains tourists with stories about heavenly riddles.

This is the road to the spaceport "America", boldly called "the first purpose-built commercial spaceport." And if you believe the commercials on the bus, this is not just a sleeping industrial park erected for the vague promises of “economic prosperity”, but almost the last stop before the start for everyone who eats an insatiable desire to reach the stars.
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The complex lies twenty miles southwest of Truth-Or-Consequences and fifty miles north of Las Cruces, and it is difficult to get rid of the feeling that everything here in the coming years was frozen in an endless and indefinite "today." Despite the fact that the cosmodrome reached airworthiness in 2010, the widely publicized suborbital flights of the company Virgin Galactic, one of the main tenants, have not yet begun. Yes, we can see that in many regions of the world private astronautics are now at a turning point, but this wave of changes will not reach the new cities of New Mexico that have invested in the “future”. Of course, there are not so many places on the planet where such an initiative, especially with an application for the provision of international services, looks plausible. But if we take into account the large and rather ambiguous investments made by the state, the result, be it success or failure, in any case will seriously affect the entire world private astronautics as a whole.

The emergence of "America" ​​is so far nothing more than another event in the long-term and glorious history of military and aerospace research conducted in this south-western corner. Our video guide quickly skips Spanish colonization and eastward expansion of the country to move on to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, in the north of the state, and Operation Clip, a secret program for exporting German scientists to the United States after World War II, such as Werner von Braun, general designer of V-2 rockets.

The White Sands test site, spread over eight thousand square kilometers in the Toularos basin, saw a lot: the Trinity bombing, the first atomic bomb, and the take-off of background Brown missiles. The cosmodrome is adjacent to the army territory and is located in a carefully guarded airspace, so testing rocket technology in these parts without interference is somewhat simpler.

Now, unfortunately, this is not a “calm bay” on the road to space, but only a futuristic attraction for tourists.

Another reason for the appearance of the site here is money. In 2006, Bill Richardson, then Governor of New Mexico, signed a partnership agreement with Virgin Galactic to build a new company headquarters. The state paid for the construction of $ 220 million from the budget, and part of the amount came from the districts of the neighbors of Doña Ana (where Trut-Or-Consequences) and Sierra (Las Cruces) are located due to the tax increase from gross revenues. It is expected that by additional taxation until 2029, a total of $ 75 million will be received . In exchange, the local population is waiting for economic change, and for good reason, according to the US Census Bureau in the Sierra district, the lowest median income of the thirty-three districts in New Mexico.

Mandy Gass, business development advisor in the administration of Las Cruces, is full of hopes about the potential impact of the cosmodrome on the fate of the city and its identity. “This is simply amazing, as if you are already in the future,” she says. “I think we have definitely become more visible on the map.”

In addition to the "domino effect" caused by the relocation of ninety Virgin workers here (in addition to the twenty-one who have already moved to Las Cruces), the city is looking forward to the arrival of other space companies.


The runway of the America spaceport. Photo: Nigel Young / Foster and Partners

But Stephen Green, the mayor of Truth-Or-Consequences, with annoyance acknowledges that the town has a population of six and a half thousand people and is mostly famous for its hot springs (“Hot Springs” - that is, literally “hot springs”, as the city was called before 1950, until the name was changed in honor of the popular TV show with riddles; residents usually call it “T-K”) and is clearly not at the peak of popularity: “I understand perfectly well that Las Cruces attracts the lion’s share of those gets to these places. We are more likely for those who are tired of the "rhythm of the big city." But Green also expects an increase in tourist traffic after commercial flights into space begin.

If they start. At the moment, it's just a futuristic attraction for visitors, and not a convenient harbor for space pioneers. Tourist buses run twice a day from the former urban community center; they drive past consignment stores, trailer parks, and steer clear of constructions that defiantly stick out near the mountains; with all its soft-rounded outlines, these structures leave a strange feeling of thoroughness and reliability. Along the way, we drive through the terrific Elefant-Bute dam, which, after twenty years of work by engineers of the Bureau of Land Reclamation, has the opportunity to farm in southern New Mexico; However, my friend from the tourists notes that the water level in the reservoir has greatly decreased compared with his childhood memories.

The architecture of the America spaceport is monolithic concrete domes and curvilinear shapes of the wet-earth color, completely inconspicuous and therefore not very impressive; a kind of "false modesty." Its design seems to refer to another well-known landmark in the South-West, which is often mistaken for the “city of the future”: Arcosanti , the “urban laboratory” of Paolo Soleri , who settled in 1970 in the mountains north of Phoenix. Yes, they are really strangely similar: probably, Soleri in his imagination saw a utopian city in the middle of the desert as easily as the concepts of “arcology” - self-sustaining “ecological architecture”, which the author later embodied in prototypes of space projects and projects of hypothetical residential complexes for the asteroid belt.


Architect Paolo Soleri on the background of the model on his own project, representing a hypothetical view of the city-rocket. Photo: Bob Daugherty / Associated Press

It’s hard not to agree, the object is really quite similar to Soleri’s revived sketches.

Official tours are held on weekends, so on Saturday, the local control center looks pustovato. They say that work is still underway here, but there are not so many obvious signs of activity. In the office rented by Virgin Galactic, traces of furniture on the carpet are taped with scotch tape, most likely with the aim of placing it in the same places. And the only spacecraft we saw was a SpaceShipTwo layout glinting in the corner of an empty hangar. Even a spaceship is not real.

Frankly, the name itself - "Spaceport" America "- sounds too pompous and theatrical. On the territory of the United States there are already a number of private launch complexes, and there are often plenty of activity and guests there. The same Virgin spends most of its tests at the Mojave aerospace center, while the Mid-Atlantic regional spaceport recently hosted Vector, one of SpaceX's main competitors.

Although there is no doubt, there are others, like the Oklahoma aerospace , which even look more like ghost towns than America. But New Mexico, by choosing such a name, is clearly trying to play on the feeling of national pride; Alas, this place seems to be at the forefront of private astronautics no more than the scenery for a science fiction film.

Rather, it is a kind of quintessence of the plot about the American wastelands: “the future” as a “rehearsal” rather than as a reality. Here you can not argue: many projects of urbanists begin as “drive prototypes through the desert”. The Hyperloop One test branch is in Nevada, unmanned vehicles ride around Tempe, Arizona, and Bill Gates chose the Arizona Belmont for a pilot project of unmanned vehicles ; jokes, but the habit of seeing the desert as a canvas for creating utopian masterpieces is still strong today, from the Mormon “state of Deseret” to Black Rock City at the Burning Man festival. Although, in this case, New Mexico seems to us rather a rehearsal of a dystopia, because most of the scientific and defense enterprises here arose for the Manhattan project - field tests of nuclear weapons "somewhere in the middle of nothing", then using it to wipe the world into powder, literally.

There are not too many “rehearsals” in the spaceport (although the fiction was filmed here - The Space Between Us ). Virgin Galactic after the crash with the death of one pilot and the injury of the second in 2014 postponed its own plans to address the problem, which the National Transportation Safety Board formulated as “an inability to think through and elaborate precautions for a scenario in which the only crew error leads to a catastrophe”. Although of course, a successful flight in 2018 somewhat restored confidence that space tourism, after so many years of waiting, was literally on the verge. While we were on our way to Las Cruces, Mandy Gass spoke out on this with restrained optimism: “No doubt many will not believe until they see with their own eyes. However, in general, we are inspired and hopeful. ”


Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo spacecraft in orbit waiting for better times. Photo: Nigel Young / Foster and Partners

Despite the lack of attention from Virgin Galactic, something is still happening. True, America has not yet become a tourist Mecca, but some sprouts in the form of excursion tours every Saturday, bringing a small stable income to the municipal treasury, are still there, and the aerospace industry is developing a bit. For example, Google tested SkyBender, its own project on the organization of high-speed Internet through unmanned vehicles. Also at the cosmodrome, they like to boast of holding 39 vertical and 7 horizontal launches, including launches organized by UP Aerospace in cooperation with the White Sands test site, and sending urns with ashes as part of Celestis' memorial space flights . And during one of the tours, a fireman draws our attention to the hangar that Boeing leased to test the new CST-100 Starliner .

The successes of the aerospace outside of New Mexico immediately cause a stir among those who supported the construction of the spaceport; For example, some time after my business trip, Ilon Musk successfully launched a Tesla private car using the Falcon Heavy PH, which added vitality to the entire private space program as a whole. (Alas, although SpaceX was going to rent a start here on a regular basis, soon its interests moved towards its own complex in Brownsville , Texas)

Those passengers who are able to afford to spend $ 250,000 on a ticket can make a short trip to the zone of zero gravity and safely return to Earth.

But when there is nothing special to demonstrate in fact, many space companies suddenly begin to believe that almost all the results of their work need to be protected no worse than a commercial secret - and sometimes it comes to the fact that publicity regarding financing and ownership is recognized as a serious obstacle to the development of projects. And now, the New Mexico legislature has overwhelmingly passed a bill in which the spaceport receives the exclusive right not to respond to civil requests. The executive director of America, Dan Hicks, argued that many potential customers had chosen other launch sites as an argument in defense of the bill, for fear of gathering information about their activities from competitors through public inquiries. Thus, the legislature met the requirements of the spaceport, and at the same time at the same meeting it was decided to transfer another $ 10 million for operating expenses and the construction of another hangar.


Demonstration stand for tourists as an attempt to put plans for the development of the complex in the context of geological eras. Photo: Ingrid Burrington

Before the adoption, small changes were made to the bill, which reassured those who support the transparency of the authorities, but still, the administration of “America” is given the opportunity to decide which requests it will respond to. In addition, it is completely unclear what to do if tenants want to hide a spill of toxic chemicals or arrange some other environmental accident (an amendment on this issue, which was made by one of the members of the Legislative Assembly, Jeff Steinborn, was rejected). At the cosmodrome, they recognize the validity of such anxiety, but insist that, according to the adopted law, in such cases it will be possible to take effective measures.

For those towns in the state that view the spaceport as the locomotive of the economy, the prohibition to ask is presented as the price for doing business. “I think New Mexico will only benefit from this,” said Green, mayor of Truth-or-Consequences, when the conversation on the slippery path of “exclusivity” for government-funded projects was called: “I don’t understand why the public should know Here are engaged in SpaceX, Boeing, Virgin, which technologies run in. That is their business. Want to know what they do? Buy their shares. "

But the editor of the web publication NMPolitics.net, Heath Hussamin, on the contrary, believes that success cannot be achieved by acting in secret. “I really hope that America will work,” he says, “I have lived here all my life, and my daughter is already six. Alas, the main export resource of New Mexico is young people, because we can educate them, but we cannot provide opportunities for self-realization. ” He is encouraged to reflect on the implications of having a spaceport in the long run. For example, the taxes that Sierra and Dona-Ana would pay would be allowed for the introduction of the STEM program in schools. Hussamin believes that the spaceport will revive the economy, but he also believes that "it is both a duty and the right of any person to know what he will end up with for his money."

Perhaps it is because of the emphasis on secrecy in the marketing materials of “America”, as well as in the information for tourists, there is nothing except Virgin Galactic plans for space tourism. Those passengers who are able to afford to spend $ 250,000 on a ticket can make a short trip to the zone of zero gravity and safely return to Earth. This is rather far from “flights into space at affordable prices,” and, moreover, does not fit the role of the main and stable source of income. Judging by the lack of noticeable activity in the office of Virgin, their flights are more like tricks than science; but for some strange reason, most members of my group of tourists accept all the ideas of “imminent travel to the Martian colonies” as a fait accompli . At first, it is not very clear why people in the desert dream of an even more uncomfortable place to live.

But the mythology of the American "frontier" is superimposed on the actual border area: extreme environments, deep space and remote corners of the desert have much in common. This explains, for example, the Mars Desert Research Station project launched in Utah, an experiment in creating habitable shelters in pseudo-Martian conditions for working out technologies for future expeditions. Dreams of being in space with something similar to the dream of conquering the desert: there is an unexplored space, probably there you can find a rich source of resources, and mysterious new lands can be better than those hopeless that the traveler leaves behind. This region has seen many boom-downturns during mining and oil and gas production, there are always lacking prospects, life is mainly determined by the art of bargaining for water , and climate change is a real threat (more than half of the state is now experiencing a serious drought ) that is why for local residents the belief in the inevitable colonization of Mars is not too different from the belief in the ability to survive in the Southwest.

Doubting the inevitability of the onset of technological and social progress with the advent of the railway line was equivalent to doubting the Will of the Lord

This is probably the truth about “America”, which is not customary to discuss - but from which it is impossible to leave. After all, the romance and attractiveness of the Wild West kept, among other things, on federal land grants for private offices, which then erected papermilk in places formerly considered lifeless wasteland . Cities grew and faded, depending on how the railway map changed; For example, the last sharp turn in the history of Las Cruces came when the city sold the priority right to Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad and turned into a major transit hub.


This earthly bus seemed to be accidentally in the shadow of the alien structure that makes up the ghost town. Photo: Ingrid Burrington

In the words of supporters of "rock", in those days, doubting the inevitability of the onset of technological and social progress with the advent of the railway line was equivalent to doubting the Will of the Lord. Nowadays, to ask about the need for the development of astronautics, funded (mostly) from non-public sources, is how to ask the question “why do we need technical progress?”. Space Portal “America” in this sense does not differ from the towns, generated by railway and mining companies, and even openly draws such parallels in its advertising booklets - in which, by the way, “progress” acts as a smoke screen from the requirements to openly publish accounting reports and concerns about investing taxpayer funds in such projects. The “romance” of space here, alas, is designed to divert from the fact that, in general, the cosmodrome is primarily a resource that receives subsidies from the state budget, but mainly serves private owners, and it is not built for entertainment, but for in order to attract additional money and a new technology industry to the poor and hungry district. The stated price and PR-rhetoric, of course, look different here than in the cities that are fighting in the tender wars for the right to build another Facebook data center or corporate technology campus, but the public concern about state funding for private companies, which and they are demanding tax breaks along with the regime of secrecy (not counting the questions about when those who are most in need of it will feel the profit from the projects) remains more or less the same everywhere.

The bus is returning to Truth-Or-Consequences, and we are watching another video presenting an increase in the availability of space through an increase in the efficiency of private business. We are reminded that New Mexico has always been on the path to prosperity, "from petroglyphs to spaceships." I do not argue that the cosmodrome has already become part of the history of the South-West, but this is still a very depressing story without an obvious happy ending. When you stand on an empty airstrip or drive through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada or California, a long line of ghost cities from the “tomorrow” that never came before, alternating with small towns that froze in the eternal now, ”and thinking about it is extremely depressing.

I watch a group of bored cows on Jornada del Muerto, leaving the America spaceport behind us, and I wonder if progress will always look like a “rehearsal” before we really end up in some kind of “future”, or are we doomed « », .And I do not find the right answer; Who knows, maybe this year the “future” will finally come to “America”, shame all impatient skeptics.

After all, here, in the desert, it always seems that the best times are waiting for you literally around the corner.