Creating an Industry

摘要

On June 19, New Mexico authorities broke ground on Spaceport America in the middle of the desert near Las Cruces, a state-backed facility that supporters hope will become a hub of the suborbital space tourism industry in the years to come. On hand for the ceremony was Will Whitehorn, whose company, Virgin Galactic, is central to those hopes.rnVirgin Galactic, founded and bankrolled by British billionaire-entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, plans to use the spaceport not only as its world headquarters but also its U.S. base of operations. Virgin Galactic plans to take customers paying $200,000 per ticket to the edge of space aboard SpaceShipTwo, a larger version of the suborbital SpaceShipOne craft that claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize - offered to the first private group or individual able to take passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers and back twice within a two-week span - in 2004.