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.

For April Fool's day, Virgin Galactic and Google teamed up to form Virgle. The mission of Virgle is to create a colony on Mars. That is, assuming Virgle wasn't a joke - which it is. Every year Google surprises me with the amount of effort they put into their April Fool's jokes. Last year was http://www.google.com/tisp/, the proposed business to put internet through the sewer system. Both ideas are somewhat thought out, and a decent of effort goes into the presentation of the idea.

This year Richard Branson had a short video calling for applications to be a Mars pioneer. Well, I took some time and made a little video in response. If you look really closely, you can see my freakishly large collection of Heinlein books...Once I put them all together in one place, I was a little ashamed of myself.

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.

Here is another article about 'Spaceport America', the spaceport slated for development in New Mexico. This article precedes the signing of the letter of agreement by Richard Branson. This article speaks almost exclusively to the unwillingness of the local New Mexican county, Dona Ana, to sign into law a tax increase for the project. I'm starting to see a particularly interesting public relations campaign by Virgin Galactic.

Richard Branson has signed an agreement to use the, as yet undeveloped, Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic will pay $27.5 million over 20 years to use the spaceport as the base of it's operations for space tourism. The facility is expected to be completed in 2009 at a cost of around $198 million. The referendum signed by Branson is not a legally binding contract - more than likely because as yet, the people of certain New Mexico counties have not agreed to raise their own taxes in order to pay for the spaceport.

Zero Gravity Corporation will take Stephen Hawking for a weightless voyage. The flight is aboard a modified 727 that lifts up to 30,000 ft before taking a series of short nose dives to produce the effect of Zero-G. The flight normally costs about $3,750.

Virgin Galactic has also offering Hawking a free ride in 2009, courtesy of Richard Branson. And courtesy a $200,000 free ticket.

Despite the ticket cost of $200,000, no shuttle in existence, no guarantee that the shuttle will ever take off, and a tentative launch date in 2009, Virgin Galactic has 200 people waiting to take off with money deposited. 82,000 people have expressed an interest in the flight, but many are waiting until the shuttle is actually built.

This story talks about Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and their attempts to build Space Ship Two, the planned sub orbital shuttle of Virgin Galactic.

George and Loretta Whitesides will be the first couple to honeymoon in space. They will be traveling aboard Virgin Galactic as one of the first 100 travelers because they are both founders. Here's their website with detailed information about their interesting careers.

Virgin Galactic will be partnering with the Swedish company, Spaceport to launch flights from an airport in Kiruna, Sweden. These flights will be taking off from a few miles north of the Arctic circle. The really neat thing is that these sub-orbital flights will be flying through the Aurora Borealis (ie Northern Lights). It should prove to be a very scenic, if not short flight. Flights aboard a Virgin Galactic ship will last about 2 hours and include about 5 minutes of zero-g flight.

A happy little article about a Lottery Vendor from Spain who wants to visit space. Or maybe it is very slick advertising by Virgin Galactic. I think it is most likely the latter. Another news release from this week says that Stephen Hawking is looking forward to his trip in space, too.

It seems as though crazy tourism adventures may really have a future, and offer a possible hope for driving near earth space travel in the near future. It's amazing what rich people will spend their money on. I mean, I was excited about buying n electric baseboard heater yesterday (because I refuse to [sic, cannot] pay for heating oil anymore).

Richard Branson steps into to the space travel fray

This article is a press release from the unveiling of the interior of Virgin Galactic's space ship. The space ship is designed for suborbital flights for 6 passengers.

Good Luck! Aceize will be following your exploits Sir Branson.