Spaceport will be self-sufficient, director says

From NM Politics.net - Spaceport America’s executive director says she expects the facility to be “operationally self-sufficient” within a year of Virgin Galactic starting its flights. Of course, there’s still no firm date for the start of Virgin Galactic flights, which will ferry paying passengers into suborbital space. Christine M. Anderson made the statement about self-sufficiency in a guest column published today by the Albuquerque Journal that you can read here. “The people of New Mexico made an investment for the commercial space industry, which is now paying off,” Anderson wrote. “…it’s important for taxpayers to know that the spaceport will be bringing millions of dollars into our economy, and it’s not just Virgin Galactic that’s spending money.” Virgin Galactic is the big tenant. Anderson wrote that the company will pay somewhere between $150 million and $250 million to the state through its lease and fees over the next 20 years. “However, there is much more on the horizon for Spaceport America, and we expect to be operationally self-sufficient within one year of Virgin Galactic’s start of operations,” she wrote. Anderson highlighted customers of the spaceport including UP Aerospace, which recently won a multi-million dollar NASA contract and a separate contract from the Department of Defense, and Armadillo Aerospace, which has launched from the spaceport twice this year and plans a third launch before the end of the year. Anderson wrote that, to date, the Spaceport Authority has employed 973 New Mexicans. She projected “approximately 500 jobs in the next three years and approximately 2,000 jobs by 2016.” Read more

Spaceport will be self-sufficient, director says