Major milestones ahead for N.M. spaceport

By Leonard David

updated 11:22 p.m. ET Jan. 28, 2008

New Mexico's Spaceport America, which is being billed as the first "purpose-built" commercial spaceport in the United States, must conquer some challenging milestones that lie ahead if it is to open in late 2009 or early 2010.

The $198 million New Mexico spaceport project will have an 18,000-acre footprint that covers open, generally level range land north of Las Cruces and east of Truth or Consequences. This area was favored for its low population density, uncongested airspace and high elevation.

The spaceport is being designed to support a variety of commercial space businesses. It is intended to serve not only as a hub for the emerging suborbital space tourism market, but also eventually to become a center for handling orbital launch.

Steven Landeene, the newly appointed executive director for Spaceport America, settled into his new post Jan. 7 after his hiring in early December by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority Board.

It is clear that Landeene has hit the ground running — and needs to.

"Certainly, everybody is optimistic. Everyone would like to see ground broken. But of course you've got architectural designs, the whole site to be prepared and bid out before you can break earth ... as well as the environmental impact study," Landeene told Space News in a Jan. 11 telephone interview. "There's a lot of behind-the-scenes activity that has to go on to do a project of this magnitude, prior to the start of digging," he said.

Landeene brings to the project some 20 years experience with Honeywell Aerospace and three years with Landmark Aviation. As the director of aftermarket services marketing, sales and support at Honeywell International Inc., he served as the global marketing and sales support leader for the company's aftermarket services.

Most recently, Landeene served as the director of strategy and planning for sales and marketing of Landmark Aviation out of Phoenix.

Taxing issues
Landeene said one large near-term Spaceport America action item is an April 22 vote in New Mexico's Sierra County to approve a 0.25 percent increase in the gross receipts tax to help foot the bill for building Spaceport America.

Last year, Doña Ana County voted in favor of the spaceport tax — albeit by a slim margin. The final certified spaceport tax election results on April 6, 2007, were 9,020 (50.8 percent) for the measure; 8,750 (49.2 percent) voted against it.

The upcoming April tax vote, if approved, would lead to the creation of a spaceport district that could spend county-collected revenue on the project. Similarly, a spaceport sales tax referendum is to be held in Otero County in the later part of the year, Landeene said.

Sierra County, along with Otero County and Doña Ana County, form a triad of counties that encompass Spaceport America, but the spaceport itself is actually 100 percent located in Sierra County, Landeene stated.

"Like any sales tax vote, taxes are not the most desirable thing for anybody to sign up for," Landeene said. But what is important for the voters to realize, he added, is that the spaceport is a "value proposition" — with the sales tax small relative to the benefit that a county is going to receive — be it from spaceport construction jobs, influencing real estate property value, the flow of tourists, as well as supplying goods and services during spaceport build-up and later operations.

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