We have a Spaceport?

There is plenty of distressing news today, but I am ignoring all of that and focusing on the rather cool item: New Mexico's commercial spaceport is now in the process of construction.

The $198 million project, which is being funded by the New Mexico state government, is located on a remote high-desert range near the town of Truth or Consequences.

British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride.

"After all of the hard work to get this project off the ground, it is gratifying to see Spaceport America finally become a reality," Richardson said.

For all of us who grew up hearing about how the future would be (and that includes most of us, I assume), and imagining what it would be like based on those far-ranging predictions (and that includes many of us as well) then proceeded to observe the future arrive and look rather familiar, things like this are highly gratifying. It's not a flying car, but hey, a spaceport is a spaceport.

And unlike green industry, the space industry will likely be highly profitable...

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said the firm already had taken some 300 advanced bookings and planned to begin flights from the spaceport within two years.

There are plenty of people with enough money to go into space (sub-orbital space, that is), and if it can be demonstrated to be safe and reliable, it may become the adult "must do at least once" item, a la Disneyworld for kids. At a gathering of the wealthy, someone might mention their Spanish villa, or yacht, but all attention will be commanded by the one who asks "but have you been into space?"

Will we really live in a world where space commutes to Asia or Europe will become routine?

It's a toss-up.

We have repeatedly demonstrated in the West that we don't care about making more power/energy available, and would rather saddle ourselves with oppressive environmental legislation and leave advancement to other parts of the world. Finding the extra energy in our system to power space flights just isn't going to happen, we must build more power-generating sources, be they nuclear power plants, or oil wells in Alaska. We can shift things around on the grid enough to cover black-outs on an unusually hot summer day, but not to cover the amount of energy that this industry is going to require. If we're fortunate/blessed, our energy capabilities will finally be expanded to cover this innovative new industry.

And that leads me to the other point, which is this:
New movements, both social and technological, have rarely been based logically on improvements in existing paradigms.
The internet, and associated information technology, captured the imagination of a generation, and they pushed that beyond all expected limits to fundamentally change we way we live and the world works, in only a few years.
Despite energy shortages, massive server farms have popped up, with their own hydro-electric power plants. Despite everyone already not having time, suddenly massive amounts of it were found available to spend (at the expense of other activities, granted) checking email, surfing randomly, and checking personal networking sites. Everything changed, not slowly as a result of gradual technology improvements, but as a result of the information revolution.

If we are ever to reach the Space Age, that every child who grew up in our generation knew was coming someday, it must be similar. Entrepreneurs and visionaries must emerge who can capture both imagination and funding. The New Mexico spaceport provides a sandbox (in the creative sense) in which they can begin to do this.

Obama has already signaled that he will not give space research a priority during his administration, but as his popularity inevitably begins to fall, it's likely that he will turn to such things to both shift focus away from unpopular socialist policies, and associate himself with popular, forward-looking ideas to boost his image.

We shall see. In the meantime, welcome Spaceport America.

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