Spaceport America: Preparing for the world of tomorrow!

Spaceport America is an ambitious project by the forward-thinking residents of New Mexico, designed to bring a much-needed economic boom to the area. However, the spaceport isn't just missing spaceships. It's also missing the promised commercial developments that were supposed to spring up around it.

As the first phase of the $209-billion dollar development nears completion, the only two things that Spaceport America can boast about on its website are that they are the first "built-from-the-ground-up" commercial spaceport in the world, and they are "home to the world's first commercial passenger spaceline company, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic."

Being the first certainly does have its advantages, and it does have some competition in both Florida and Texas, so they aren't the only ones trying to tap into this market, but the problem is that the market is nonexistent. Virgin Galactic has been around since 2004, and they have been running test flights of their White Knight Two mothership and launch platform since December 2008, and their SpaceShipTwo spaceplane has been on 22 gliding flight tests as of this month.

Ottawa entrepreneur John Criswick paid his $200,000 for a ticket on a Virgin Galactic flight that was originally scheduled for 2008, however Virgin won't be taking passengers on sub-orbital flights until at least the end of next year.

So, with that kind of lagging time-table for passenger space flights, it's really no surprise that hotels and restaurants aren't swarming around Spaceport America yet. However, some local officials are pointing to another reason.

"The issue is informed consent legislation," said John Mulcahy, the mayor of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, according to CTV News. The New Mexico state legislature passed a bill in 2010 that would absolve spaceflight companies of any liability for their passengers should their spacecraft crash or explode. However, the law apparently failed to include part suppliers in the exempt companies, and that, according to Mulcahy, is holding the development back.

Liability laws are a concern for companies, but so are the spaceport's remote location — over 300 kilometres from Albuquerque — and the lack of any corporate incentives from the state government.

So, it would seem that it's going to be a slow start for this entire venture. Still, this is a bold venture, and although the ticket prices are quite high at the moment, the people behind Spaceport America and Virgin Galactic are counting on those prices dropping as the technology develops further, and more people see the advantage of a 2-hour point-to-point sub-orbital spaceflight over a 20-hour jet flight to the same location.