New Mexico's Spaceport signs 20 year lease with Virgin Galactic

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 09:47

New Mexico's rise to dominance of the space industry in the U.S. may become the fodder of economic development case studies for decades. The State of New Mexico just announced that it has signed a twenty year lease of facilities at Spaceport America with Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic says it intends to locate its world headquarters at the facility, bringing with it jobs and tourism.

New Mexico started down this path years ago, when the whole idea of spaceports seemed a bit kooky. But it has been a textbook example of setting a bold vision, funding it properly, and sticking with it until results begin to pay off. Many communities and regions have great ideas, but fail in execution by not funding them properly and/or not staying with them long enough to see the impact.

Virginia is another state with big plans for a commercial spaceport. The Eastern Shore of Virginia has been working with NASA for sometime to convert the obscure Wallops Island rocket launching facility into a mixed use spaceport that supports both government and commercial operations. Not surprisingly, broadband is playing a key role, and NASA and the two counties on the lower Delmarva Peninsula have formed the Eastern Shore of Virginia Broadband Authority, which is about to break ground on a major fiber backbone to support spaceport operations. The Broadband Authority is also beginning work on a community broadband fiber to the home network in the very rural area because the influx of knowledge workers, scientists, and engineers need business class broadband services at home.