British billionaire Richard Branson opened the world’s first-ever commercial spaceport in the New Mexico desert – designed by Foster + Partners and URS

British billionaire Richard Branson opened the world’s first-ever commercial spaceport in the New Mexico desert, the new home for his company, Virgin Galactic.

The eccentric businessman, with usual flair, sported a black jacket and waves of hair flying as he inaugurated the building by breaking a champagne bottle against a hanger building, while rappelling down the side of it.

“Spaceport America,” as the site is called, will serve “as the operating hub for Virgin Galactic and is expected to house up to two WhiteKnightTwos and five SpaceShipTwos, in addition to all of Virgin?s astronaut preparation facilities and mission control,” said the company in a statement to the press.

About 150 people already booked for travel on the first flights to orbit attended the event, said the company.

Also attending were head of Virgin Galactic George Whitesides, commercial director Stephen Attenborough, and famed US astronaut — and second human being to step on the moon — Buzz Aldrin.

Branson last month said he hoped to launch a vessel into space within the next 12 months, which he said would kick off an era of commercial space travel.

“The mother ship is finished… The rocket tests are going extremely well, and so I think that we’re now on track for a launch within 12 months of today,” he told CNN’s Piers Morgan in September.

“About an hour between Los Angeles and London is not completely out of the question,” Branson said, adding that it will likely take many years before the company can offer such a service.

In the meantime, Virgin has sold some 430 tickets for space travel — at $200,000 a pop — for an estimated $86 million.

A number of private companies are rushing to fill the gap left by NASA, which ended its 30-year shuttle program in July with the completion of the final Atlantis mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Photos & Renderings of Spaceport here.

Source: Breitbart

Phase one of world’s first commercial spaceport is now 90% completed – in time for first flights in 2013

Flight of fancy? Spaceport America is billed as the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport

Phase one of the world’s first commercial spaceport, which will be the hub for Virgin’s consumer spaceflights, is now 90 per cent complete.

The 1,800-acre Spaceport America site, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is the home base for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s most ambitious business venture yet.

It already boasts a runway stretching to nearly two miles long, a futuristic styled terminal hanger, and a dome-shaped Space Operations Centre.

The work is now just months away from completion, according to a spaceport spokesman, and is set to be done by the end of the year, well in time for the first expected Virgin Galactic spaceflights in 2013.

Christine Anderson, the newly appointed executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told SPACE.com she was ‘jazzed’ about the progress made so far.

Pioneering: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is shown on its maiden flight from the Mojave Air and Spaceport in Mojave, California in this March 22, 2010 file photo

 Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo launch system is still in testing and she says it is up to them when they decide it is safe to fly tourists to the edge of space.

At a best guess, she told SPACE.com, flights could begin in the first quarter of 2013.

Construction of phase two has already begun and is set for completion in time for Virgin Galactic’s pioneering flights.

It will include the completion of the Vertical Launch Complex facility, two visitor centres in nearby towns and a further visitor centre on the main spaceport site

See Video

Source: Mail Online