LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Spaceport America (SA), located near White Sands in New Mexico (32.9903796o N, –106.975041o W) is an excellent choice for launching and recovering spacecraft (see Image 1).
Image 1: Spaceport America in Google Maps

The primary reason for choosing this spaceport over all the other spaceports on planet Earth is because of the weather and its near–resistance to climate change. SA enjoys an astonishing 340 days per year of conditions good enough for VFR operations. We will subtract an additional 116 days, which means that we will have 224 flight days every year.

The White Sands facility is situated due east and can be used as an emergency runway. This runway, however, will only be used as a last resort. One of the US Space Shuttle had landed there in 1982 and the technicians could not remove all of the gypsum from the spacecraft.

The spaceport is owned and operated by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA). The location has an elevation of almost 4,600 feet and has a 10,000–foot runway (see Table 1).

LATITUDE

32o 59’ 25”

N

LONGITUDE

–106o 58’ 11”

W

ELEVATION

1.401

km

VFR WEATHER/YEAR

340

days

RUNWAY LENGTH

3.048

km

RUNWAY HEADINGS

16 / 34


RUNWAY MATERIAL

Concrete


Table 1: Spaceport America Basic Specifications

The drawback to using this location for orbital spaceflight operations is that it is, well, illegal to fly orbital spaceflight operations from this location. Spaceport America is nowhere near a large body of water that is necessary if the rocket explodes and debris comes raining down.

This deficiency will be address in a future chapter.


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