New Mexico
Governor Bill Richardson is to declare today that October 4-9 will be declared
as X Prize Cup Week.
Those are
the dates for festivities to be held in Southern New Mexico - a follow-on event
to last year's back-to-back suborbital runs of SpaceShipOne from the Mojave, California spaceport and securing the $10 million Ansari X Prize purse.
At the October X Prize Cup events there will be demonstration flights from at
least eight of X Prize Cup team competitors. Also to be previewed will be the
Tier-1 X Prize Rocket Racer, according to X Prize Cup spokeswoman, Diane
Murphy. In addition, in association with this year's activities, there will be
the staging of the largest-ever student space event in the days following the
Balloon Fiesta in the Northern New Mexico/Albuquerque area.
Next year,
the X Prize Cup will establish regular races, resulting in the presenting of
the X Prize Cup for Rocket Racing.
Entertaining events
Other events announced for the "Countdown to the X Prize Cup" include:
Static
hardware displays of the X Prize team vehicles, flight simulations and
opportunities to visit with astronauts, spacecraft designers, and X Prize team
leaders and pilots.
Demonstration
flights of reusable space vehicles by future X Prize Cup contenders at the Las Cruces Airport
Education
Day at the Alamogordo History Museum for New Mexico's next generation of engineers,
pilots, astronauts, and space entrepreneurs with more than 2,000 students
participating
During
the event, Zero Gravity Corporation's G-Force One will conduct weightless
flights.
Spaceport preparation
Last year,
the state allocated $9 million to develop the infrastructure, launch and
landing facilities necessary to host and market the competition and related
events throughout the state, and to prepare the Southwest Regional Spaceport in
Upham, near Las Cruces, to become the country's first
licensed inland spaceport.
This year,
the legislature created the New Mexico Spaceport Authority to build and operate
the Southwest Regional Spaceport. Governor Richardson has committed $1 million
dollars in capital outlay funds to support this growth in spaceport
infrastructure.
White Sands Missile Range will be the interim spaceport until
the Southwest Regional Spaceport is opened in 2007 or 2008. They plan on
hosting the 2006 Inaugural X Prize Cup pending proper licensing of the
competition vehicles.
Governor
Richardson noted that this year's Countdown to X Prize Cup is a key step in
creating an event that opens the space frontier to all private citizens. It
also will bring new companies, provide new jobs, increase tourism statewide,
and help brand New Mexico as the place to be to experience the future, he added.
advertisement
