 New Mexico's Spaceport America.  The Lockheed Martin craft on the spaceport launch rail.  The test vehicle in flight. (Lockheed Martin video)  Al Simpson of Lockheed Martin Corporation.  UP Aerospace CEO Jerry Larson. TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, New Mexico USA — Spaceport America has launched two unmanned commercial rockets and touts plans for space tourism, but some secret rocket research also is being done. Lockheed Martin Corporation is now using the spaceport to advance some of its less-publicized technology. This prototype of Lockheed Martin's new spacecraft is only one-fifth the size the future vehicle would be. It looks a bit like the space shuttle and would fly to space and return the same way. But even the big version would not carry people, just satellites. The goal is to get to orbit faster and cheaper thanks to an automated reusable spacecraft run by its own computers and just a handful of people for a launch crew. "Doing test work out here at the spaceport allows us to kind of validate those kinds of activities and use those to predict what the future larger systems would be," Al Simpson of Lockheed Martin told KRQE News 13. This day's launch is a test to check out design and handling inside the atmosphere as the craft maneuvered through a pre-planned course in the sky. Although the flight didn't go into space, the builders of the vehicle hoped to learn a lot about how the on-board computers, software and avionics, work together. For Lockheed Martin Spaceport America in southeastern Sierra County offers the perfect venue for research like this. "To be able to have a spaceport located down here where we can come in and almost just drop right in, do our thing and then be able to go back home and review the data and then be able to schedule and come back, that is very key for us," Simpson said. To provide the actual launch services for this vehicle the new firm hired the company that's already launching rockets at Spaceport America: UP Aerospace. UP Aerospace knows the state hopes for big bucks from a space tourism industry, however... "Space tourism is great, but if it could be broader and include aerospace companies and military operations and things like that, then it will be much more stable as a spaceport moving forward," Jerry Larson of UP Aerospace said. "It won't be so reliant on just one tenant." As is usual in aerospace research the inaugural flight of Lockheed Martin's spacecraft answered many questions and posed some more. Designers will adjust and be back. On April 22 Sierra County residents will vote on a quarter-cent sales tax to help pay for the spaceport. Neighboring Dona Ana County has already approved a similar tax, and Otero County has yet to schedule a vote. Legislation creating a state spaceport authority requires at least two counties approve the tax before it can be collected. Copyright © 2008, KRQE-TV.
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