Spaceports hoping to host these budding commercial spaceflight companies have proliferated. New Mexico’s $212 million, taxpayer-funded spaceport plans to host Virgin Galactic once that company starts flying passengers commercially. The Federal Aviation Administration has licensed nine spaceports around the country, including New Mexico’s Spaceport America and, the latest addition to the roster, a spaceport in Midland, Texas, licensed last month. The XPrize began with a challenge in 1996 that culminated with the 2004 award: Could a privately funded company create a reliable, reusable vehicle to send humans into space? The challenge attracted 26 teams from around the world that invested $100 million in aggregate for research and development in suborbital space flight, according to the XPrize Foundation. A new, $20 million XPrize sponsored by Google is encouraging private teams to safely land a robot on the moon by December 2015. The goal, according to its website, is “to inspire pioneers to do robotic space transport on a budget.” abqjournal/474997/news/struggling-to-get-off-the-ground.html
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:31:51 +0000
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