Rocket Men and the Students who Help Them

On May 2 Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences hosts the first annual New Mexico Education Launch. Students from New Mexico universities and high schools have contributed work on sensors to the rocket. Tune in at 7 a.m. mountain time this Saturday for a live feed of the launch preparations and launch.

Increasingly  New Mexico and west Texas are the place for space. Among the developments: For three years in a row culminating last October the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was held in Las Cruces, NM. Robots made ready to hover over the lunar surface hovered for prize purses over the New Mexico surface.In January Virgin Galactic, Richard Bransons company, became the official first anchor tenant of the Spaceport (recent pictures at the end of this post) near TorC. The spaceport, soon to begin taking construction bids for its design by British architect Sir Norman Foster, offers to send the likes of you, me and Rose into preorbital disarray for several hundred large. And: with the constantly-permutating X Prize reflecting mindbending liaisons between industry and creative innovators, the future is cracking open to boisterous competition in service of humanitys future. The X Prizes latest contest announced last year (sponsored by Progressive Auto Insurance) has  111 registered teams working to design a production car that will perfect fuel efficiency at 100mpg. Why, when swine flu is grabbing all the news, and peoples mood of thumb generally dour, does nobody talk about the promise of technological development  for our region? (Evidently the other byte stealing the rocket fire is that Lance  Armstrong’s comeback after a broken collarbone finds him racing in the Gila with his team).  Spaceport America designs, and a thumbnail of how earth looks seen from way high.

Photo Gallery.