Rick Homans, the Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, was the guest for this Space Show program. Rick was with us for the first hour and the second hour was Open Lines. Rick started out giving us a comprehensive status report on the development of Spaceport America, tax and bond issues, AST licensing and related matters. We talked about the UP Aerospace payload recovery process, we talked about the commercial usage of the spaceport with commercial range and tracking fees in arrangement with White Sands. Rick explained the lease agreement with Virgin, even the road paving plans for getting to the spaceport. We talked about possible schedules, orbital spaceflight from the spaceport and agreements with the country of Mexico and others. Listeners had many questions for Mr. Homans including questions about the possible value of space or the Governor Richardson presidential campaign. Don't miss his answer on this one. Mr. Homans was asked about the investment advisor report that was issued last August, the problems with it and the replacement of that specific advisor with a new one more in sync with the needs of New Mexico and the spaceport. Listeners asked him about possible dual land use for the areas around the spaceport as possible revenue generators while the spaceport develops its own revenue stream. That approach is currently not favored and you will want to hear the reasons why. The issues of the 500 mile long historical El Camino Real trail came up and Rick Homans explained what the spaceport was doing to preserve and protect this important piece of history. The Spaceport Authority is very interested in protecting the trail and working with the trail supporters to make sure that the spaceport does not do anything counter to the preservation of El Camino Real. Mr. Homans invited further questions and comments from anyone interested in the spaceport for any reason, including potential customers, users, and just interested people. Please email him at Rick.Homans@state.nm.us. The second hour of the program was open lines and I fielded many listener questions as well as phone calls on a variety of subjects from Space Show phone line audio quality to the Face on Mars, from Direct 2 as an alternative to the NASA VSE architecture. We even talked about visiting nearby asteroids as an option to returning to the Moon. Your questions and comments are always welcome at drspace@thespaceshow.com.
Guest
The Space Show
