Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson expects space tourism to begin within nine to 18 months. ((Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press))


Spaceport America is the world's first facility designed specifically to launch commercial spacecraft. The celebration of its three-kilometre runway comes less than two weeks after another major step for Virgin Galactic: the first solo glide flight of its space tourism rocket ship.


Stretching across a flat dusty plain 72 kilometres north of Las Cruces, the runway is designed to support almost every aircraft in the world, day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations.

Virgin Galactic, the anchor tenant of the taxpayer-funded spaceport, plans to use the facility to take tourists on what will first be short hops into space. State officials want to add companies for other commercial space endeavours, such as research and payload delivery missions.





Some of the soon-to-be space tourists attended Friday's runway dedication.

While space tourism projects such as Virgin Galactic's venture receive plenty of publicity, the commercial space industry is seeing rapid developments with companies such as SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., seeking to win NASA work to supply the International Space Station.

SpaceX has successfully placed a dummy payload in orbit and has contracts to lift satellites next. Other firms, including Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwell, Tex., are testing systems that would carry unmanned payloads to space.

Last month, the U.S. Congress approved legislation that affirms President Barack Obama's intent to use commercial carriers to lift humans into near-Earth space.