50 degrees, partly sunny and windy.
Sunrise. We got up early to go on a tour of Spaceport American today. On the way the tour drove by the dam at Elephant Butte Lake. It was built in 1916 and at the time of construction it was the biggest dam in the world.
The elephant Butte the lake is named after. The elephant is laying down with the trunk to the right. Welcome to Spaceport America. It is a purpose-built commercial spaceport and is owned by the state of New Mexico. There have been more than 300 vertical launches from the vertical launchpads and there is a 12,000 x 200 foot horizontal runway. There are 4 permanent tenants. Virgen Galactic, AeroVironment/ Hapsmobile, UP Aerospace, and Spinlaunch And many short term customers.
The first thing you see as you enter is this huge sculpture called Origins. It has pieces of glass embedded in it that reflect the light. This is a model of the 'Enterprise', the first of Virgen Galactic's space ship launched into space. It was brought up to 50,000 feet attached to a huge catamaran like carrier aircraft called the Mothership and it launched from there. It tore apart in space due lack of a key safety feature and copilot error.
Looking at the Space Operations center and a couple of hangers. One of the hangers contains a experimental drone with solar panels that can stay aloft for 4 months and will be used as a communications drone. The other hanger has another drone that can stay up for a year and will be used for surveillance. The Space Operations Center houses the fire department, security and the mission control.
Me sitting at Mission Control. Our tour operator Curtis with the trophy given at the annual Spaceport America Cup, the worlds largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition.
This is the airport crash fire rescue vehicle which was among the fire departments emergency vehicles. The fire dept. is there 24 hours a day/7 days a week.. We were driven on the 12,000 x 200 foot runway.
I was not on the right side of our tour bus to get a good photo of the side of the Virgen Galactic's hanger. Our tour bus in front of the hanger.
These are internet photos of the Virgen Galactic hanger and the Mothership that takes the space ship (in the middle) to 50,000 feet where it launches into space. We walked up the 'astronauts walk' in the huge terminal.
Join us as we depart for the new frontier. Replicas of Jornada Mogollon petroglyphs believed to symbolize star/celestial phenomena.
A couple of tour participants experiencing the G-force simulator. We passed on it. After our tour we soaked in the hot springs, then went to Walmart. The parking lot is covered with solar panels.
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