Last year Dona Ana County in New Mexico voted for an increased tax to help build a new spaceport in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. Now it's time for Sierra County, including the town of Truth or Consequences, to take a vote. The county will vote on a 0.25% sales tax to help fund the construction of the spaceport. If the tax passes in Sierra County, then the government can legally begin collecting the spaceport tax. Apparently New Mexico tax districts are multi-county groupings. The new tax proposal has generated some news coverage by promoting contention between people who want the spaceport and people who don't want to pay the tax. A pretty common protagonist-antagonist match-up in the papers.

The newest, and biggest, XPrize was announced yesterday. Google is putting up $30 million for the first private firm to put a robot on the moon. If I'm reading this press release correctly, there is also $20 million dollars for any firm that is able to land a rover on the moon by the end 2012.

The folks who put together the $10 million prize for the first privately built craft to carry people into suborbital space has put together a new prize. The new prize will be announced at the WIRED NextFest in Los Angeles September 13th. The last prize put together by XPrize spawned the burgeoning 'space tourism' craze, which has launched a growing market of private companies willing to launch rich people into earth's suborbital space. The next prize promises to be very interesting.

URS Corp. won the design competition for Spaceport America in New Mexico's Mojave desert. Their design "is a low-lying, striking bit of construction that uses natural earth as a berm, and relies on passive energy for heating and cooling, with photovoltaic panels for electricity and water recycling capabilities. A rolling concrete shell acts as a roof with massive windows opening to a view of the runway and spacecraft."

When the Spaceport is completed it will be a roughly 100,000-square-foot (9,290-square-meter) facility. The picture presents a deceptively small view of the facility, because most of the construction will be underground. The construction will cost approximately $31 million US dollars.

Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites suffered an explosion during testing at Mojave Airport in New Mexico. The team from Scaled Composites was working with Nitrous Oxide as an oxidizer for the engines that power SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo when the explosion occurred. According to an interview with Burt Rutan, the Nitrous Oxide Oxidizer had been tested before and is known to be safe. The cause of the explosion is currently unknown.

Two people were immediately killed in the accident. One died later of injuries sustained. Three others were also injured during the blast.

Northrup Grumman has agreed to increase their stake in Scaled Composites from 40% to 100%. Effectively buying out Scaled Composites. Scaled Composites is the aerospace company run by Burt Rutan, the engineer who helped develop SpaceShipOne -- the winner of Ansari X-prize to build the first private craft to travel into space. SpaceShipOne became the for Virgin Galactic's space ship design. In fact, Scaled Composites has the contract to deliver Virgin Galactic's space tourism craft and launch vehicle. There is no word on if the buyout will effect this contract.

Bigelow Aerospace successfully launched and deployed the Genesis II inflatable space station module. Once released by the Russian rocket carrying the cargo, Genesis II expanded from it's 6.2 ft diameter size to it's 8 ft diameter deployment size. The module was also able to successfully unfold it's solar panels to provide power to the inflatable module.

Bigelow Aerospace gets +2 points for deploying solar panels in space. This private company based in Nevada was able to do what NASA and China's aerospace program both failed to do successfully. (NASA's recent ISS snafu)(China's recent

For as little as $100 million dollars, you too can fly around the moon in a chartered Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Space Adventures, headquartered in Vienna, VA, has contracts currently pending for these private lunar circumnavigation flights. If the deal progresses it will be the first private flight of it's kind. Two passengers and a pilot will fly a 'boomerang pattern', or free return trajectory, around the moon in a slightly modified Soyuz craft. According to Space Adventures the Soyuz craft was originally designed to fly around the moon. They believe that the craft does not really need any modifications to successfully make the flight. However, the Space Adventures people want to make the windows a little larger and improve the communications system.

Benson Space Company released the design of their new 'Dream Chaser' ship for suborbital tourism. Benson Space Co. was recently in the press after they helped an Oracle contest winner get into space without paying taxes. The new Dream Chaser design features many windows, similar to those on the Virgin Galactic Ship. The design is less costly to produce than previous designs by Benson's company. It is also faster to build which means that Benson will be able to start sending passengers into space by their 2009 start date.

SpaceX will be allowed to operate at Cape Canaveral. This will move the launch of SpaceX's Falcon rockets from the Marshall Islands to Florida. SpaceX has been largely funded by DARPA to date. Experts claim that SpaceX will now be in direct competition with Orbital Science, who run the Minotaur rocket. The US Air Force green lighted the 5 year license agreement. It pays to do good work with DARPA, I suppose.

The article does not state if the move to cape Canaveral affected this competition. The article also does not mention how Cape Canaveral will affect the costs of running the Falcon rockets.

Upgrade to all of the Russian Dnepr rockets will delay the launch of Genesis 2, the inflatable space hotel of Bigelow Aerospace. The launch will be delayed until the end of May.

Planet Space has this nice little video on Fox about their plans to start a suborbital transportation company that can move people between Chicago and Japan in 40 minutes.

Unofficially, the voters of Dona Ana county passed a tax measure that will help fund the construction of a private space port near Upham, NM. The vote totals are not official because not all the provisional ballots have been counted. However there are only 108 provisional ballots, and the measure is leading by more than 250 votes.

There has been a lot of press about this 'Spaceport America' thing recently. Just yesterday there was an article on MSNBC about the plan. A great quote from the article Carol Garcia, 52, of Las Cruces, said: “It’s just a rich man’s dream that he needs us to help pay for. If it’s your dream, build it yourself.” While I am glad that the plan is moving forward, these folks in a very poor county of one of America's poorest states shouldn't have to pay for it.

New Mexico voters are in the voting show down over taxes to support the local spaceport, dubbed 'Spaceport America' since Richard Branson came and signed a document stating that Virgin Galactic would probably use the spaceport once it's built. At the moment results show 51.5% of the voters in favor of the new tax to support the spaceport. It looks like the PR blitz may have worked. The name is a nice touch.