Commercial Space Industry
Before 2004 no privately operated manned spaceflight had ever occurred. The only private individuals to journey to space went as space tourists in the Space Shuttle or on Russian Soyuz flights to Mir or the International Space Station. The Ansari X PRIZE was intended to stimulate private investment in the development 
of spaceflight technologies. The June 21, 2004 test flight of SpaceShipOne, a contender for the X PRIZE, was the first human spaceflight in a privately developed and operated vehicle.
Following the success of SpaceShipOne, Richard Branson, owner of Virgin and Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne's designer, announced that Virgin Galactic had licensed the craft's technology, and were planning a fleet of vehicles for commercial space flight operations from Spaceport America in south
ern New Mexico. XCOR Aerospace also plans to initiate a suborbital commercial spaceflight service with the Lynx rocketplane. Armadillo Aerospace and others have similar plans. Space Tourism has arrived!
In December 2004, United States President George W. Bush signed in to law the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act. The Act resolved the regulatory ambiguity surrounding private spaceflights and is designed to promote the development of the emerging U.S. commercial human space flight industry.
Beyond commercial human space flight and space tourism, markets are rapidly developing for sub-orbital research and experimentation, low cost small satellite deployment, freight transport to the International Space Station, and even personal vacationing in space. A new world of access to and living/working in space is upon us! Click on the links below to learn about some of the leading players in this new industry, and see our Las Cruces / Regional Assets page to see why southern New Mexico is leading the way in this new, critical industry!
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