The world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport will be a “green” building rising out of the desert of New Mexico, US, according to plans made public on Tuesday.The designers of Spaceport America opted for a “low-lying, organic shape” that they say will blend into the surrounding landscape while conveying “the thrill of space travel”.
The spaceport will be the headquarters of Virgin Galactic, which will begin test flights of its passenger spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo, in 2008 and aims to be taking paying passengers to the edge of space by 2010.
The 9300-square-metre, $31 million facility features a circular terminal topped with an undulating concrete roof and flanked by berms of earth rising out of the desert.
Visitors will enter the spaceport through a channel cut in the landscape, walking between retaining walls covered with exhibits on the history of the area and of space exploration. They will be able to look down on spacecraft parked in the hangar and watch them rolling down the runway through the terminal’s expansive windows.
“It’s really science fiction becoming reality,” says David Wilson, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA). “We think it’ll become a destination people want to come and see even if they’re not one of the passengers to space.”
Light Cue 23
Notes from the Drafting Table
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The text of Light Cue 23 by Lucas Krech is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at lucaskrech.com.
