Las Cruces, NM

We arrived here late yesterday afternoon. Went grocery shopping and then pretty much did nothing the rest of the night. The campground is perched on the foothills overlooking the city. The sunrise/sunsets are beautiful. Because of the region, there is practically no grass. All the sites are gravel and the overnight area is pretty tight. The longer time area's and the sites that backup to a overlook cliff are much nicer but also much more expensive. 

A fly over of White Knight with VSS Enterprise attached

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and drove to Truth or Consequences which is about 1.25 hours north. We met the tour van and traveled out to the middle of the desert to tour Spaceport America. This is also called the New Mexico Spaceport. The entire facility is owned by the State of New Mexico but Virgin Galactic and several other space related agencies work there. There is the "Spaceport" area which holds a hanger, visitor area, mission control and a separate operations center.  This is where the "White Knight" will take the VSS Enterprise (attached to its underbelly) up to 40,000 feet and then the Enterprise will be released and fire its own rockets to sub orbit. It can take six passengers of which they are booked for a year already at $200,000 per seat. The entire trip last about 2.5 hours.  Eventually, with the use of a new launch vehicle, larger than the White Knight they will be able to launch orbital flights to the space station from this facility.

Ground and flight operations

Terminal and flight hanger

About 5 miles away on the same property is where "vertical" launch pads are located. Conventional (but recoverable) rockets are launched here. White Sands testing facility is on the opposite side of the mountain range and recovers rockets which land there by design.

The "pre" tour is pretty cool and there is a lot of history told about the region, people and spaceport. Another interesting fact is that Ted Turner's (CNN) ranch of 380 thousand acres backs up to the spaceport property.

Because White sands has a permanent 24/7 (vertically infinite) no fly zone no aircraft can come anywhere near the launch and landing area.

The buildings are complete and staff and operations personnel will arrive soon. The first flight is expect to launch Spring of 2013. I think both of us would love to come back and see it!

And the "We are here" 

As requested: Saturday 90, clear skies but a bit breezy

We leave for Tucson Sunday morning.