Upham: With his usual flair, British billionaire Richard Branson abseiled down from a balcony, shook up a big bottle of bubbly and took a swig while christening the world's first built-from-scratch commercial spaceport on Monday.
Branson's Virgin Galactic will stage its commercial space tourism venture from Spaceport America in a remote patch of desert in southern New Mexico.
Branson was joined by Governor Susana Martinez, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and scores of would-be space travellers at the terminal-hangar for the dedication. It had been nearly a year since Branson was in New Mexico to celebrate the completion of the runway.
"The building is absolutely magnificent," he said. "It is literally out of this world, and that's what we were aiming at creating."
With the spaceport and mothership completed, the company is now finalising its rocket tests.
"We're ticking the final boxes on the way to space," Branson said. He hopes enough powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's sleek spacecraft can be done by the end of 2012 to start commercial suborbital flights from the spaceport soon after.
More than 450 people have purchased tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic. About 150 of them attended the ceremony. Before getting to enter the hangar, the crowd was treated to a flyover by WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that one day will help take space tourists on suborbital flights.
The $209 million (Dh767.50 million) taxpayer-financed spaceport will be a launch station for people and payloads on the rocket ships being developed for Virgin Galactic.
With custom metal panelling and massive panes of glass, the state-of-the-art terminal rises from the desert floor to face the nearly five kilometres concrete runway.
The building will house Virgin Galactic's spacecraft, mission control and a preparation area for travellers.
Tickets to cost $200,000
Tickets for rides aboard WhiteKnightTwo cost $200,000. The 2 1/2-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth that until now only astronauts have been able to experience.
Commercial service will start up after the company gets a licence from the Federal Aviation Administration. Nasa has already signed a $4.5 million contract with the company for up to three chartered research flights. The spaceport was designed by United Kingdom-based Foster Partners, along with URS Corp. and New Mexico architects SMPC. Virgin Galactic and officials with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority are touting the design as green.
