Economics
Spaceflights From New Mexico Desert Depend on New Jobs
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The frontier of commercial spaceflight, which opened when NASA’s shuttle program ended this month, is taking shape in an unfinished assembly of metal, glass and concrete that resembles a rust-colored stingray burrowed halfway into New Mexico’s desert.
“Spaceport America” bills itself online as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” and will be the official home of Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s venture that proposes to take tourists into suborbital space. It’s about 75 miles southwest of the Trinity atomic-bomb test site where the U.S. ushered in the nuclear age 66 years ago.