11 FEATURE The ArchiTecT’s NewspAper MArch 12, 2014 B OLDLY GO THE COMMERCIAL SPACE FLIGHT INDUSTRY IS TAKING OFF, AND WITH IT A NEW ARCHITECTURAL TYPOLOGY: THE SPACEPORT BY BILL MILLARD Quick: close your eyes and think of matter in environments with no Spare-no-expense public projects phase in the evolution of the field. 80 payloads a year... globally.” space flight. Where do the images atmosphere and, hence, no friction with single-use rockets that discard Consultant/engineer Derek Webber, Envisioning a wide range of “horses come from? If you’re of a certain age, (they don’t, as Thom Mayne once launch stages into the ocean, manned executive director of Spaceport for courses”—spaceports tailored they’re from the Mercury, Gemini, noted in reference to the Apollo Lunar by larger-than-life rocket jocks who Associates, has analyzed the business to particular purposes—and looking and Apollo missions of the 1960s, Module that his Cooper Union building joined the astronaut/cosmonaut elite models and regulatory climate for to suborbital tourism as the path to the heroic era that culminated in so uncannily resembles). through military training, have given passenger space flight, managing commercial viability as general space a moon landing. For nearly everyone Personal visions of space travel are way to economical carrier craft Futron Corporation’s ASCENT study transportation matures and expands, younger, they’re from cinema and less likely to suggest NASA’s more (“motherplanes”) taking off horizontally of space markets for the National Webber compares the brewing space video: some iteration of Star Trek, prosaic space shuttle (or, lower on on regular runways, ferrying light Aeronautics and Space Administration boom to the barnstorming era in Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and the aerospace-iconography ziggurat, reusable vehicles full of relatively (NASA)’s Marshall Space Flight Center. the early history of aircraft. “Go back 2001: A Space Odyssey. The visual The Jetsons). Yet commercial unheroic civilian passengers. Tourism After decades in the communications to the Wright brothers. They started vocabulary became a cliché long ago: spaceports, a critical step toward a and eventual routinization, in other satellite industry, he believes that something, and they didn’t know sleek techno-biomorphic spacecraft future when space is open to every words: the passing of the torch from space tourism could grow far larger. where it was going to lead.” straight out of William Gibson’s George and Jane, have moved from people with the Right Stuff to people “It’s an enormous potential market,” One thing is certain: wherever Gernsback Continuum, zooming speculation to actual construction over with plenty of the green stuff. he said, “because if each person is this industry is headed—back to the between Fullerian/Saarinenesque/ the past decade. If the space-travel Though it’s easy to view rocket- considered as a payload, you’ve got moon, to a future Martian settlement, Aaltoid space stations and CGI battle industry follows the path these ports’ borne millionaires as the ultimate potentially tens of thousands of to the Martian moons Deimos and scenes, dodging the question of proliferation implies, those humbler dilettantes, some longtime aerospace payloads per year, whereas in normal Phobos (an exploratory possibility whether streamlined contours actually models will be closer to reality. observers see tourism as an essential commercial space you have about that some at NASA Goddard Space Situated between Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Spaceport America— designed by Foster + Partners and URS—is the world’s first dedicated commercial spaceport. A eric AM T cepor A esy sp esy T cour 12 FEATURE The ArchiTecT’s NewspAper MArch 12, 2014 This proposal for a Houston Spaceport to be built at Ellington Field was designed spectacle on the ground. It marks the held by no other location in the States, by Nejc Trost of Trost & Associates and Sam Ximenes of Exploration Architecture first realized case of the commercial which is the proximity of the White Corporation. It provides flexible facilities for flight operations, research and spaceport as a distinct building typology. Sands missile base,” creating a large development, business incubation, and a museum. commercial no-fly zone. Additional X Prize leads to New Mexico benefits of the location include Space-flight privatization began impressive desert views, a 12,000- with the 1980 founding of the foot runway, and the prevailing French satellite firm Arianespace and westerly winds, which the building accelerated after businessman Dennis employs in a geothermal system, Tito’s self-financed International Space channeling air beneath large earth Station visit on a Russian Soyuz rocket berms via long tubes for cooling and in 2001. The Ansari X Prize— $10 delivery into the mechanical plants, million offered by telecom tycoons making the HVAC system more Anousheh and Amir Ansari to the first efficient. A broad, blanket-like roof of nongovernmental team that could thin-shell concrete keeps direct sunlight deliver a manned reusable spacecraft from penetrating the building and to the Kármán line, the 100-km provides additional thermal mass. (62-mile) altitude accepted as the Although flight is obviously energy-in- border between Earth’s atmosphere tensive, environmental performance and outer space, twice within two is an important priority for the port; weeks—gave the effort a boost. the terminal is not carbon-neutral, but Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a it is designed to attain LEED Gold, partnership of aerospace designer Anderson reports. The site offers an Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites firm incremental advantage over sea-level and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, areas: “We’re also at altitude,” she won that competition in 2004 with adds. “We always say, ‘The first mile is SpaceShipOne, a carbon-fiber craft free,’ because we’re at 4,600 feet, so whose folding-wing design allows that means more payload, less fuel.” a high-drag feathered configuration The curves of the low-slung, for re-entry and a glider configuration symmetrical, steel-framed facility for landing. SpaceShipOne, which can be read as a horseshoe crab or a launched from the motherplane manta ray as easily as a parked space- White Knight at California’s Mojave craft or winged alien; it references Air and Space Port, now hangs in both Earth and space. “We wanted the Smithsonian’s National Air and something that really felt that it was Space Museum. Its successor, almost tethered,” Brooker continues, SpaceShipTwo, large enough to “floating above the landscape, in the carry two pilots and six passengers landscape. That gave us an aesthetic (all with window seats), is undergoing straight away. We like that it hovered, testing as Virgin Galactic’s demon- but we weren’t consciously trying to stration craft for a maiden flight drive anything that looked futuristic.” carrying Branson and his two adult Internally, it circulates observers on children from the New Mexico port a viewing bridge close to the hangar and back, with White Knight Two space without disrupting the facility by (VMS Eve, after Branson’s mother) placing them right in the vaults with as carrier. Though Virgin Galactic the equipment, a decision that Brooker has kept details quiet and revised calls the most important design-stage its timetable several times, Webber change in a competition proposal speculates that the Bransons’ ride that otherwise remained consistent. may occur as early as late 2014. Lifting the walkway allowed the The convergence of the X Prize, the architects to join the control and train- appearance of Virgin Galactic, and the ing vaults as one large “superhangar” energetic promotion by NMSA, said with enough clearance for carriers and Spaceport America’s project architect jets to pass below. Grant Brooker, senior partner at Galleries for spectators are among Foster + Partners, created an optimal the earthbound considerations that opportunity for the firm to apply its make an active spaceport more than signature high-tech, high-efficiency a launch site. Astronauts are the approach to a new realm of transpor- most prominent people a port serves, tation infrastructure. It wasn’t a hard but they are outnumbered by terrestrial es at sell—more a case of “‘You had me at onlookers whose purchases of soci s spaceport,’ really. Any conversation souvenirs, hot dogs, lodging, and A d that begins, ‘We really want to build a other goods, Webber has concluded, AN T spaceport in America,’ that’s definitely will be a key part of any private space- a project we want to do. This is not port’s revenue stream. This far from esy Tros esy an expensive facility; this is not a other settlements, Anderson pointed T very big facility; but we were trying out, “we had to build a small city,” our c to make something that was very self-sufficient in basic infrastructure: Flight Center have studied), or only operational; its first-phase construction executive director Christine Anderson concentrated and where, [as] in the water, power, and sewer, plus a fire to the checkbooks of indulgent was completed in 2013, and its describes as “the Holy Grail... that will early days of flight, you get the people department, security, emergency flight hedgefundistas and celebrities—its vertical-launch component (it supports cut costs 100-fold in the vertical space close to the equipment.” termination capability, and emergency trajectory leads through a quiet airfield both horizontal and vertical takeoffs) industry.” Siting decisions for spaceports, at medical technicians. Aware of the on 18,000 acres between Las Cruces has hosted 20 launches since 2006. Uniquely among its existent peers, least for now, rank remoteness above port’s potential for education aimed and Truth or Consequences, New Virgin Galactic, the furthest-flung and perhaps providing a prototype for accessibility.