Our endeavor is going to involve a copious amount of water. Once the initial funding has been secured, we will have the leverage to negotiate water rights deals with state and local governments. Water rights are negotiated and often go to the highest bidder (or to the ones who have superior political clout). $100 billion will give us both the ability to be the highest bidder and to have political clout. Securing water rights is therefore reduced to having enough money and knowing the right people.
The least desirable option is to transport seawater. This adds to the power expense since the water would have to be desalinated first. Additionally, a leak in the pipeline would spill toxic (salt) water onto the land, which is unacceptable. We are therefore forced to find a source of fresh water.
Our first and preferred choice is to obtain water from the mighty Rio Grande River to the west of the spaceport. We would construct a small pipeline to transport the water, along with all the necessary hardware included, such as a filtration system, water pumps, etc. However, this option is probably not viable since the river isn't as mighty as it once was.
Our second choice would be to tap the Pecos River to the east. However, the same restrictions as in our first choice would probably apply in this case as well.
Our third choice is obtaining water from the mouth of the Rio Grande River and using a pipeline to transport the water back up to Spaceport America.
As a reminder, we will secure overfly rights with the state of Texas (Image 1) to an orbital inclination of 60 degrees. We called it "El Corredor" ("The Corridor").
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| Image 1: Close-up View of First Orbital Ground Track |
Our water pipeline will follow roughly the same route.
The advantage to this option is that there are few entities claiming water rights at the location where the river empties into the salty Gulf of Mexico. However, the easiest and least expensive method would still be using water from the Rio Grande to the west.
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