A New Exit to Space Readies for Business

THE FINAL FRONTIER A lunar landing pad used in model competitions near the New Mexico construction site for Spaceport America.

By DAN BARRY
New York Times

UPHAM, N.M. -- Take Highway 51 east out of Truth or Consequences, a small city that years ago assumed the name of a game show on a dare. Drive through miles and miles of desert, then turn right at an old train depot whose bustle has long since pulled out. Keep going.

After eight miles, turn left on a dirt road that leads deeper into the sage and yucca vastness of New Mexico, past a ranch that used to be a stage stop on an ancient trade route called El Camino Real. Soon after, you will come to your destination: the future.

Here, where rattlesnakes hibernate and rabbits scurry, there unfolds a two-mile runway designed to accommodate spaceships. And right beside it, past those giant rumbling tractors of sci-fi design, the groundwork is being laid for a hangar large enough to store spaceships between launchings.

This is not a secret government project, or some NASA reception hall for alien dignitaries. This is Spaceport America, a $198 million endeavor by the State of New Mexico to plumb the commercial potential of the suborbital heavens — a place once known only to astronauts, dreamers and the occasional chimp.

Space tourism. Scientific research. Satellite deliveries. All possible up there, where the stars glitter like spilled coins. Who knows? One day you might decide to skip another two-week vacation in the Wisconsin Dells for a two-hour trip into space. Fly Virgin Galactic. See the sights from as high as 80 miles up. Five minutes of weightlessness guaranteed. Just $200,000.

President Obama’s call last month for fundamental changes in the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seemed to open the door, or roof, ever wider to private industry. Some people here interpreted his words to mean that your seat back and tray table should be in their full upright positions, because commercial space travel is about to blast off.

And this flat, deserted, mostly rain-free stretch of New Mexico is the perfect location, says Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, the spaceport’s anchor tenant. “It is about the closest you get on planet Earth to a Martian landscape,” he says .

Southern New Mexico has long held claim to the skies, thanks in part to pioneers with local ties, like Robert Goddard, a father of modern rocketry; J. P. Stapp, a leader in aerospace safety; and Ham, the space chimp.

You might also include Gary Whitehead, 43, affable car salesman from Truth or Consequences, though not because his family’s dealership was once owned by the former astronaut Frank Borman. Mr. Whitehead, a longtime public servant, has been championing a spaceport in New Mexico since 1994.

Back then he was a freshly elected member of the Sierra County Commission, captivated by an entity that had been created by various visionaries and politicians. Its understated name: the Southwest Regional Space Task Force. Its over-the-top goal: to have a spaceport built in southwestern New Mexico one day.

Mr. Whitehead wanted in, so he created a space task force for Sierra County. Word soon spread that if you wanted a deal on a car, or information about the economic possibilities of the great beyond, Gary Whitehead was the man to see.

Few people in Truth or Consequences dismissed the spaceport plan as “crazy Buck Rogers stuff,” Mr. Whitehead recalls. Then again, this is the sleepy spa city that, in 1950, changed its name from Hot Springs because Ralph Edwards, the host of “Truth or Consequences,” promised to broadcast from the first town to adopt his radio show’s name.

(Over the years the city has voted to keep the name, perhaps as a way of giving thanks that the offer had not come from, say, “Bowling for Dollars.” It has also named a park after Mr. Edwards, who for a half-century returned every year to celebrate the city that called his bluff.)

The concept of a spaceport remained just that for many years, even though it seemed to make perfect sense. An 18,000-acre stretch of the Cain family ranch was an ideal location for a spaceport. The restricted airspace of the White Sands Missile Range meant uncluttered skies for launchings. And with the high elevation, you could argue that a space launching’s first mile was free.

Finally, about five years ago, things began to click. Since then, New Mexico has added the spaceport to its economic development plan; Virgin Galactic, the commercial space travel business of the British billionaire Richard Branson, has signed a 20-year lease; construction has begun; and 326 people have placed reservations for their trip to suborbital space. Virgin Galactic says it has received $44 million in deposits so far.

What’s more, most residents here seem open to the idea. Two of three local counties have voted to support a sales tax to help pay for the space project, including Sierra County, where Mr. Whitehead was a co-chairman of a lobbying campaign called People for Aerospace.

By now, Spaceport America has been part of the local conversation for so long that it stirs about as much excitement as a new Applebee’s. Last year, for example, The Las Cruces Sun-News published a headline that read: “Spaceport, Animal Shelter Board Members Chosen.”

Mr. Whitehead, though, has gone from ho-hum to wow. At first he saw the project merely as a way to lift the local economy, he says. But as the project took shape, he felt awe. “It became, ‘Gee whiz,’ ” he says.

Mr. Whitehead, who was recently appointed to the state’s Spaceport Authority, which is overseeing the project, checks in at the village of construction trailers that have cropped up amid the desert brush. Accompanied by Dave Wilson, a marketing consultant, he leads a quick hardhat tour, past signs that say “Caution: Equipment Crossing” and “Authorized Launch Personnel Only.”

Right here, where the ground is being cleared, or “grubbed,” will be the 110,000-square-foot Terminal Hangar Facility, which will also include administrative offices. And here, close to the unfolding ribbon of runway, is where a groundbreaking ceremony in June featured actors dressed as Old World explorers and dignitaries discussing the New World discovery of the heavens.

And here, not far from the home of a ranch hand, is the Vertical Launch Facility, where several space vessels have been shot into the sky. One, in 2007, contained some of the cremated remains of dozens of people, including the astronaut Gordon Cooper and James Doohan, who played Scotty in “Star Trek.”

Of course, the hope is to send people, not ashes, into space. This could — could — happen as early as 2011, although Virgin Galactic says that it is concentrating first on matters of licensing and, especially, safety.

Still. Imagine. A mothership named Eve zooms off the runway and 50,000 feet into the sky, where it releases a smaller spaceship, the Enterprise, that rockets higher still. High enough for the two pilots and six paying customers to see the curvature of the Earth, and hear the silence of space.

Imagining this is not difficult for Mr. Whitehead. His problem, he says, is convincing people that “there’s more to this than rich people flying to space.” These customers, he says, will effectively be underwriting the possibility for space research, space education and all sorts of “space-related businesses.”

Imagine.

The tour ends, and is followed by a long trip back to Truth or Consequences, where the lot at Whitehead Chevrolet is filled with earthbound vessels, new and used. But the artwork on display inside — Van Gogh’s mysterious night skies — reflects the starry, starry dreams of a car dealer in a place known to accept dares.

This Land
Dan Barry takes readers behind news articles and into obscure and well-known corners of the United States.

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources

Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk.

By Frank Clifford
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. - More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.

Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.

So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.

Laboratory officials insist that the waste doesn't jeopardize people's health because even when storm water rushing down a canyon stirs up highly contaminated sediment, it is soon diluted or trapped in canyon bottoms, where it can be excavated and hauled away.

"We are seeing no human or ecological risk," said Danny Katzman, director of the lab's water stewardship program. "We won't be surprised on occasion to see a higher than normal reading. But those higher values last for 40 minutes during a flood, and maybe two hours out of a year."

Much surface contamination, however, becomes embedded in sediment or moves down into groundwater. That subterranean migration poses the greatest long-term danger to drinking-water wells and ultimately the Rio Grande.

"When you see a child's footprints and Tonka toys in canyons where there is plutonium, there is reason to believe that a lot more work needs to be done to make the environment safe," said Ron Curry, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department.

In 2002, the department issued an extensive cleanup order stating that waste at Los Alamos may pose "an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment." Laboratory officials accused the department of exaggerating the threat and resisted the order for several years before agreeing to a revised plan to scrub about 2,000 dirty sites by 2015.

As part of that effort, about 300 monitoring wells and gauges have been installed. Contaminated soil is being removed from canyon bottoms. Wetlands are being planted and small dams built to arrest the flow of polluted storm water. In the summer, the lab began loading some of its hottest radioactive waste into sealed containers by remote control and trucking it to a federal underground storage facility in Carlsbad, N.M.

Ambitious as it is, the plan deals with surface sites, not tainted aquifers. About 18 million cubic feet of waste is sequestered at Los Alamos. No one knows how it is slipping through scrambled layers of rock described by Katzman as "unbelievably complex geology."

Moreover, scientists at Los Alamos say they haven't determined where all of the waste was buried across the laboratory's 40-square-mile property. And they acknowledge that some of the monitoring wells used to measure contamination in deep groundwater may have failed to detect certain radioactive isotopes.

Adding to the uncertainty, a draft report released last summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the lab may have substantially underreported the extent of plutonium and tritium released into the environment since the 1940s.

More recently, the state Environment Department reported finding DEHP, an organic compound used in plastics and explosives, at 12 times the safe exposure level in an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Los Alamos and the nearby community of White Rock. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies DEHP as a probable human carcinogen also capable of harming reproductive systems.

In another surprise, water from a broken main flushed out buried waste near an old plutonium processing plant last year and pushed it beyond the largest dam built to stop the spread of contamination. Analysis of sediment by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oversight Bureau revealed "the highest concentrations [of plutonium] the bureau has ever recorded for this medium."

One of the canyons where radioactive waste has been found joins the Rio Grande just three miles above a diversion project the city of Santa Fe is building to capture nearly 3 billion gallons of water annually from the river. The $200-million project, scheduled to start operating in two years, is being designed to screen out and treat contaminated water. But not all radioactive isotopes are easily treatable. Tritium, which has been detected near the Rio Grande, bonds with water.

The directors of the diversion project -- while publicly expressing their confidence in the treatment system -- have been quietly urging the laboratory to do more to stop waste from moving toward the river.

George Rael, assistant manager of environmental operations at the lab, said it would cost as much as $13 billion to remove all accessible contamination. Even if there were enough money available, exhuming the waste could put more people at risk than leaving it alone -- at least in the short run.

"Some of the waste offers quite a challenge," said David McInroy, director of the lab's corrective action program. Digging it up, he said, could expose workers and others to a toxic cloud of debris. If left in place, it might turn up years later in groundwater.

With a population of more than 12,000, Los Alamos today is a far different place than it was in 1943 when the secret weapons complex was known as "Site Y."

The lab conducts climate-change research, screens AIDS vaccines, evaluates new tests for breast cancer and analyzes biological pathogens. Yet most of its budget still goes toward national defense. Los Alamos is the nation's sole manufacturer of plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear weapons, and it continues to produce toxic waste.

Many residents of Los Alamos have become inured to the hazards of their environment. They hike and picnic in canyons dotted with toxic hot spots.

Just north of Los Alamos, the Santa Clara Pueblo recently installed air monitors that confirmed fears that the wind carries radioactive dust.

Joseph Chavarria, head of Santa Clara's environmental affairs department, said dust settles on the ground after it rains and contaminants are absorbed by edible plants. He said even potters are at risk: "When we make pottery, we test the texture of the clay by putting it in our mouths."

Pueblo officials would not reveal the levels of contamination detected by the air monitors. "I can say they were high enough to raise concerns about the future," said Santa Clara Gov. Walter Dasheno. "It made me think it might not always be safe to live here."

Pearce wilderness bill draws fire

Diana M. Alba
Las Cruces
Sun-News

Nathan P. Small expresses concern regarding a bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce. (Sun-News photo by Shari Vialpando)

LAS CRUCES — The introduction of a bill last week by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., has revived controversy about the fate of thousands of acres of public land in Doña Ana County.

Pearce, also a candidate for U.S. Senate, last Wednesday introduced legislation, H.R. 6300, that would remove a temporary wilderness designation from parcels of Doña Ana County land and instead create two new designations for certain swaths. It would also change a federal process for selling public land, opening up 65,000 acres for disposal.

A spokesman for Pearce said the legislation, backed by a group of area ranchers, accomplishes a goal of protecting key lands from development, without hindering law enforcement access. Ranchers applauded the legislation, saying it would keep operations unharmed.

However, conservationists during a news conference objected to the bill, saying it would weaken protection that already exists for special areas and create a large-scale sell-off of lands currently under federal control. They advocated for a competing proposal that would grant federal wilderness to much of the acreage. The designation keeps land from being developed and prohibits mechanized travel in most instances.

Pearce spokesman Brian Phillips said the congressman went about crafting the legislation because he believed a process for drafting the wilderness proposal was flawed.

"There was a notion that everyone agreed with the wilderness proposal, and what we found was that there was considerable disagreement," he said. "We decided to try to forge a better bill that was agreeable to most of the parties that had an interest in the legislation."

Under Pearce's bill, a temporary wilderness designation would be removed from eight regions in Doña Ana County. The designation, created in the "80s and early "90s, is generally managed as if it was wilderness by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; one exception is that vehicles are allowed on designated roads.

In place of the temporary designation, Pearce is proposing that roughly 300,000 acres be classified under two new designations: special preservation areas and rangeland preservation areas. Special preservation areas are proposed for near Picacho Peak and the Doña Ana Mountains and would prevent the sale or lease of that acreage. Rangeland preservation areas — which includes land around the Organ Mountains — would exist to promote grazing and would allow motorized vehicle use on designated roads.

Doña Ana County rancher Tom Cooper applauded Pearce's proposal in a news release.

"We are gratified that Congressman Steve Pearce has recognized our efforts of the past two years by introducing this legislation," he said. "Congressman Pearce remains steadfast in his efforts to meet the desires and expectations of the citizens of the 2nd Congressional District and the state."

Cooper is a member of People for Preserving Our Western Heritage. The group contends wilderness, because of a ban on vehicle use, will hinder ranching operations on public lands.

A crowd of wilderness supporters attended a news conference Monday at the Southwest Environmental Center in Las Cruces to express opposition to Pearce's proposal. Among those in attendance were Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima, Doña Ana County Commissioner Oscar Vásquez-Butler and City Councilors Nathan Small, Sharon Thomas and Dolores Connor.

Small, who also works for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, addressed attendees, saying Pearce's legislation, by removing the temporary wilderness status already given to some lands, is a step backward. In addition, he said a provision calling for the sale of 65,000 acres of public lands goes against planned growth and the protection of open space.

"Congressman Pearce's bill calls for the stripping away of permanent protections in places like the Organ Mountains and replacing them with a much-lesser designation ...," he said.

Small called the bill "an attack on our public lands" and said it "seem intended to please a select few special interests."

Asked to clarify the statement, Small said he believed special interests included certain members of the ranching community and off-road vehicle groups, as well as some developers.

Phillips responded, saying those were the groups Pearce felt had been left out of the development of an initial proposal for wilderness that was put forward by conservationists. In addition, he said a provision calling for land sale would allow for input from the local community.

Phillips said the sale of land "cannot violate any city or county ordinance or master plan," he said. "Second of all, it has to be in accordance with the BLM land use plan. There are considerable provisions for groups of all kinds to get involved."

The first wilderness proposal in Doña Ana County surfaced in late 2005 with draft legislation proposed by U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici. It would have created about 200,000 acres of wilderness, while freeing up 65,000 acres for eventual sale. But the draft drew criticism from environmental groups and some in the development community, and Domenici never introduced the legislation. Conservationists countered with a proposal of their own to create about 300,000 acres of wilderness and other protected land.

A spokesman for Domenici declined to comment on Pearce's legislation.

New Mexico 4-Wheelers - 50 Years Of Trail Riding

By Joan Wolf
4Wheel Drive & Sport Utility




An early trail ride of stock vehicles to view unusual rocks near Cabezon in 1958.

It's been an exciting 50-year ride for the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based New Mexico 4-Wheelers (NM4W). Incorporated in 1958, the original club name was Albuquerque Jeep Herders. However, the club was never restricted to Jeeps, and the name, New Mexico 4-Wheelers, was adopted in 1976. Regardless of name, the club has always been committed to fun, safe, responsible, and family-oriented off-highway adventure.

Twenty people attended the first Albuquerque Jeep Herders meeting held on August 6, 1958. The newspaper notice invited "all owners of vehicles with 4WD or rough-road capabilities."

One of the first club runs was to the Mt. Taylor area of the Cibola National Forest, 70 miles west of Albuquerque. It was September 1958, and four vehicles participated: a CJ-3, CJ-5, and two Willys Station Wagons. The off-highway section was a Forest Service road that wound up the mountains through pine forests and open meadows and ended at the La Mosca Peak fire lookout (elevation 11,038 feet). Those carburetors must have been well-tuned!

In 1959, a group of 22 vehicles hauling 64 people caravaned to the Gila Cliff Dwellings near Silver City, New Mexico. According to the trip report, the group "encountered a nearly perpendicular trail on the side of Copperas Peak that had been strewn with boulders by recent rains. They also had to ford the hubcap-deep Gila River 18 times before reaching the remote cliff dwellings. The club picked up three Fort Bliss, Texas, military men who were stranded in a pickup truck on the rocky route." This route is now paved all the way to the ruins.

Looking back, it seems that people did more with less. In a 1960 outing to the Rio Salado Valley near Socorro, New Mexico, the club newsletter reported, "Dr. Homer Musgrave's Jeep fell into a hole of quicksand, and it took a number of Jeeps to get it out. The Jeep Herders also pulled a deer hunter's car out of the sand." If winches were used, it wasn't mentioned.

Fifty years is a long time for any organization to carry on. What are the secrets to longevity? Alan Gilmore, now a Colorado resident, was an active member from 1983 to 1995 and a four-wheeler before and since. He says, "The club has always been conservation-conscious. We stayed on established trails and abided by the same rules on the trail as on the highway."

That meant no drinking, no shortcuts, and no racing.

None of the 1958 charter members still belong. Pat and Sue Brady, 22-year members, are the longest-standing current members. Why has the club remained intact for 50 continuous years? Pat explains, "We're nondenominational. Pickups, Suzukis, Rubicons ... it doesn't matter. We accept everybody. And we're dynamic. We like to do lots of different things, and we change. Members have been into sand drags and hard-core rockcrawling, but trail riding, easy to hard, has been the mainstay of the club."

As with any organization, there have been ebbs and flows. In 1983, the club was running out of steam. Alan remembers, "My wife Marty and I were in our 40s and were the youngest members age-wise. The charter members were getting older and driving on dirt roads, not trails."

After scouting for more challenging trails, Alan and Marty introduced the group to "new" areas including the Caballo Mountains in southern New Mexico. The Caballo Trail, on BLM land, is rated Hard and remains a club favorite. Caballo offers big rocks, shelf roads, and the history of Palomas Gap, a notch between mountains that allowed stage coaches to travel between New Mexico and Texas.

Over the past few years, the club has been stable at 70 members/families. The club strives to retain existing members and attract new members by offering a well-rounded schedule of activities. There are trail rides at varying levels of difficulty, campouts, and participation in outside events and the political arena.

Some runs that started in 1958 became club traditions. Christmas tree-cutting runs, "aspencades" to view fall colors, and summer events in the higher elevations of New Mexico and Colorado are mainstays. More recently started traditions include a "Chic Challenge" with women-only drivers, an annual trek up Mt. Blanca in Colorado, and a large attendance at the Chile Challenge in Las Cruces, New Mexico, every February.

Community service has been an ongoing club endeavor. In the early decades, the club organized toy drives and provided Christmas trees for the New Mexico Children's Hospital. There have been work days at a day-care center, assistance with search-and-rescue efforts, and cleanups of adopted forest trails and highway miles.

Road closures on public lands have been an ongoing concern. The meeting agenda for February 16, 1960, included "speakers discussing the state land-grab situation." The club spoke out against a Cibola National Forest proposal to regulate off-road-vehicle use in January 1976. And since 2007, the group has been heavily involved with the National Forest Travel Management Rule. To show support for keeping forest roads open to motorized vehicles, members attend meetings, write letters, and document routes. Members have even taken United States Forest Service staff members on field trips to show them routes to save.

NM4W was instrumental in the formation of the Southwest Four Wheel Drive Association (SWFWDA), currently comprising clubs from six states (New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri). In 1991, Alan took action on what had been talked about for years. He linked seven clubs to form SWFWDA. Alan says, "We needed a bigger voice to fight trail shutdowns. A regional group would wield more influence with the United Four Wheel Drive Association and the government."

A series of events are planned throughout 2008 to celebrate the 50-year milestone. The club will rerun some early trails, participate in a show 'n' shine, perform community service, and host a reunion picnic. A photo book showcasing club vehicles through the decades is being compiled by member Justin Simenson.

From early rockhounding and photography trips in stock vehicles to today's typical rockcrawling in TJs with 35-inch tires, the focus remains fun and adventure. For 50 years, club members have enjoyed and promoted fun, responsible four-wheeling.

Lauri Rector, current NM4W president, comments, "What an amazing history this club has had. To look at things that were recorded in 1958 makes me realize how long this club has sustained itself and thrived as well. I think it's due to the camaraderie of club members. We share an interest in getting out there with our vehicles and seeing what nature has to offer."