The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), which issues licenses and permits for projects like the
West Texas spaceport bankrolled by the Internet billionaire, was taking comment
on a 229-page draft of an environmental report filed by the Bezos firm
developing the venture.
The hearing was being held
in this town of about 3,000 some 120 miles (193 kilometers) east of El Paso and
the nearest population center to the isolated operation.
"They're a tight-lipped
group,'' Culberson County Judge John Conoly said Tuesday. He plans to go to
find out more about the plan.
The spaceport is being built about midway between
Van Horn and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The park, which includes
some of the highest mountains in Texas, is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) to
the north on the Texas-New Mexico border.
"Our purpose is to provide
the public and other interested parties to review the draft documents, to ask
questions, point out mistakes or omissions in our analysis of the environmental
impact,'' said Hank Price, an FAA spokesman in Washington. The process is just
one step leading to permits and licenses, he said.
Bezos was not expected at
the hearing. The 42-year-old Seattle entrepreneur has talked in the past of
building spaceships that can orbit the Earth and possibly lead to colonies in space.
The report provides hints
to the hush-hush operation, detailing plans for what Bezos' company, Blue
Origin Inc., calls its New
Shepard Reusable Launch Vehicle. The spacecraft would take off vertically
like NASA's space shuttle. But unlike the shuttle, which glides to earth and
lands like an airplane, the New Shepard RLV also would land
vertically.
The conical-shaped vehicle,
about 50 feet (15 meters) tall and 22 feet (6.6 meters) in diameter at the base,
would consist of two modules stacked on each other. One module would provide
propulsion, the other would be a crew capsule "capable of carrying three or
more space flight participants to space,'' according to the report.
As many as 10 suborbital
tests could begin later this year, and incrementally grow in duration and
altitude over the next three years. As many as 52 commercial flights, the goal
of the project, could begin in 2010.
Blue Origin, based in the
Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, wants to construct buildings, launch and
landing pads, storage tanks, parking lots and other structures on what's known
locally as the Corn Ranch, 165,000 acres (66,000 hectares) of desert, salt lake
beds and cattle grazing land purchased by Bezos.
The economic impact of the
project on the remote area of Culberson County, among the least populated
counties in the nation, is expected to be minimal, according to the report. A
staff of 20 to 35 people, most of them "imported'' professionals, is forecast
to be based at the site once construction is complete.
advertisement
