Skyrocket In Flight, Afternoon Delight!

MSNBC caption: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, left, receives a model of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft as a gift from Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson during Wednesday's news conference in Santa Fe.

Gene passed along this Bill Richardson razzle-dazzle from New Mexico:

"What we are calling the second space age will open up a wide range of commercial opportunities, including point-to-point cargo delivery, with personal and business travel," Richardson said, during a Santa Fe news briefing that provided New Mexico's perspective on the ambitious spaceport plan.

...The "anchor tenant" of the 27-square-mile facility is to be Virgin Galactic, which intends to offer suborbital spaceflights starting in late 2008 or early 2009. The very first flights will take off from Mojave Airport in the California desert, but Virgin will move its base of operations to New Mexico after the new Southwest Regional Spaceport is finished, in late 2009 or early 2010.

If Virgin can't even sell compact disks at a profit, what makes them think they can run a spaceport? And they are trying to rope in the chic Hollywood/Santa Fe crowd too? (gag!) The Roswell/Flying Saucer crowd won't be far behind either.... Science guys probably won't even be able to stick a thermometer outside either - insurance regulations, you know.....

I'd very much would like to be on one of these flights, but it would be much more fun if I could leave the crystals-and-pyramids and UFO crowds behind. And the crazed millionaires. I'd also like to pay for it with other people's money (which is an advantage of the U.S. Space Program for the few, lucky astronauts). Everyone is going to have their hands out to get paid here. And the ultimate goal of people like Richardson is to make sure the sidewalks in Alamogordo and Tularosa get paved and everyone has a good time.

Well, what are you going to do? The Space Shuttle is becoming more and more of a White Elephant as the years go by, and there's a lot of Federal investment in the Space Program (all that *stuff*) rusting away under-used out there at White Sands. I figure Richardson is thinking that someone has to be pro-active, or the place will become some kind of eccentric Space Slum. And if you could make it cheap enough, maybe some sub-millionaires would like to join in on the action. But the personal travel portion just killed me: "Quick! I've got to travel from Tehachapi, CA to Carrizozo, NM, today, and I can spare no more than an hour to do it!"

Bread and circuses; circuses and bread.

Hmmm......