LAS CRUCES, New Mexico USA -- Las Cruces is the stage once again for two days of roaring rockets and the entrepreneurs who aim to make money with them. The 2006 X Prize Cup, a futuristic celebration of the fledgling commercial spaceflight industry, begins Friday and will include rocket launches and engine firings, demonstrations of jet packs and rocket planes, educational activities and a vast array of scale model rockets and space exhibits.

The events aim to jump-start private space activities, X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis has said. "These are the individuals that will go down in the history books as the Wright brothers and Lindberghs of the 21st century, and New Mexico is making that possible," he said last year. This year's event, the sophomore effort of the X Prize Foundation, will also feature several space-related technology contests, such as demonstrating a lunar lander or a space elevator "climber," for $2.5 million in prize money.

"It's going to be an even bigger, more professional show than last year's," said state Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans, whose department is one of the key event sponsors. A lot has changed since a crowd of nearly 20,000 braved stiff October winds to visit New Mexico's first commercial spaceflight exposition last year. That show presented exhibits, most of which were mockups, by about 15 commercial space flight and space tourism companies. Many had previously been contestants for the original, $10 million X Prize, awarded in late 2004 to a group of entrepreneurs who successfully launched a manned spacecraft twice.

Since then, several so-called "rocketpreneurs" have made considerable strides toward proving the viability of commercial spaceflight.

High-flying businessman Sir Richard Branson announced his space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, would be headquartered at Spaceport America, the state's planned $225 million spaceport south of Truth or Consequences. He plans to begin sending tourists to 7 miles above Earth aboard luxurious spacecraft in 2008. The flights will cost $200,000 at first, but the company expects the costs to decline as space tourism becomes more routine. Virgin officials have told Congress they expect 100,000 space tourists per year by 2020.

NASA awarded a preliminary contract to two private companies to build and demonstrate a reusable spacecraft that could restock the space station -- an early indication the bureaucratic and terminally underfunded space agency is seriously exploring sharing some of its work with small, agile companies.

"I think the fact that NASA is embracing the X Prize Cup and the entrepreneurship and innovation of these companies is very significant in itself," Homans said.

Meanwhile, the Russians have continued to offer multimillion- dollar flights into orbital space, and another firm has begun offering chances to briefly escape gravity in special aircraft used to train astronauts.

And the spaceport, currently a temporary launchpad and cluster of portable buildings, played host to its first, albeit flawed, launch. UP Aerospace, of Connecticut, launched 50 payloads skyward in one rocket Sept. 25, but the rocket failed to reach its planned 7-mile altitude, instead reaching about 42,000 feet before plunging into a nearby mountain range.

Undaunted, however, UP Aerospace still plans a few launches this year, though it has delayed them until the cause of the Sept. 25 crash is determined.

This weekend's events will hail these and other efforts to make commercial payload and human travel into space a reality.

It will feature three contests with more than $2.5 million in prize money:

A NASA-sponsored challenge to demonstrate a lunar lander on a lunar-surface pad built by New Mexico State University engineering students;

A second vertical rocket launch competition intended to demonstrate lunar landing technology;

The Space Elevator Games, in which more than 20 teams will use solar-powered vehicles to lift payloads up a 164-foot tether. This contest is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of a proposed elevator.

As currently conceived by NASA, the space-elevator would involve a giant ribbon attached on the Earth end to a ship and at the other end to an orbiting counterweight.

Other highlights will include:

A Friday field trip for 5,000 elementary, middle and high school students, with special curriculum and other space-related materials and demonstrations;

Hollywood stuntman Dan Schlund will make several demonstration flights in his futuristic, 75-mph "rocket belt."

Original X Prize benefactor Anousheh Ansari, who recently became the world's first female space tourist during a September ride aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, during which she blogged live about her experience, will discuss the trip.

Demonstrations of rocket engines, rocket-powered bikes and trucks, and launches of everything from children's model rockets to full-size spacecraft.

A demonstration of the first prototype rocketplane that Las Cruces-based Rocket Racing League plans to eventually use to mount NASCAR-style rocketplane races.

Colorful characters like Diamandis and Branson have gotten the state lots of press, but New Mexico's recent space activities are by no means the first.

Robert H. Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry, conducted his research near Roswell between 1930 and 1941. The U.S. War Department began using what was then called White Sands Proving Ground for guided missile tests in 1945, and German rocket scientists continued their missile research at the range after World War II. White Sands has also hosted NASA space module and shuttle tests and landings.

© 2006 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.