The new spaceport will be the first commercial facility of its kind in the world, and one of its main functions will be servicing tourist flights. It will be erected in the desert on the border between the United States and Mexico, near the San Andreas ridge.
The initiator of the construction is Virgin Galactic, which operates in conjunction with the US government-sponsored New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA).
New building with an area of 10,000 sq. m will serve as a "station" for tourists leaving for airless space and returning to Earth, the control room of the cosmodrome and a hangar for parking aircraft and shuttles; it will also house the headquarters of Virgin Galactic and NMSA. The assignment turned out to be quite in the spirit of Foster's work, and as a preliminary design, a streamlined, organic building was presented that could easily fit into the scenery of any science fiction film.
Visitors and employees will be guided inside by a buried “trench”. Its walls will feature texts and images that tell about the history of New Mexico, about the first settlers, and also about the history of space exploration. The line of this open tunnel is continued in the plan of the building - through the "superangar", where the spaceships will be, and the "waiting room" area. According to the project, the building is deepened into the ground, which made it possible to use geothermal energy for heating and cooling it. It will also mitigate the impact of sudden temperature changes characteristic of the area and use the western winds for natural ventilation of the complex. Sunlight will be widely used to illuminate buildings (in particular, spaces for space tourists), as well as to generate electricity using solar panels; the terminal also has systems for water re-treatment. All this allows you to count on the construction of a platinum LEED certificate.
The construction budget is 31 million dollars, its construction is planned for 2008-2010.
It should be noted that we are not yet talking about real space flights: the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft with tourists will lift a special cargo plane White Knight Two to a height of 15 km, then the "starship" will itself take off to an altitude of 135 km, into the suborbital space of the Earth. There, its passengers will be able to experience five minutes of weightlessness and see our planet as only astronauts usually see it. In total, such a trip will take about 2.5 hours and will cost $ 200,000.
