Spaceport America officials in New Mexico were scheduled to announce the winner of architectural and engineering contracts for the new commercial spaceport, but, in light of Thursday’s accident in Mojave, that announcement has been postponed until a date TBD. “In light of the tragedy at Mojave Air and Space Port, we feel that it is important now to turn our complete attention, prayers and thoughts to the families and friends of the workers who lost their lives,” outgoing New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Rick Homans said in a statement quoted by the Las Cruces Sun-News.

Just a couple of months after becoming the executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, Rick Homans announced today that he is resigning to take a job in the private sector. Homans, who stepped down as the Secretary of Economic Development for the state to take over as head of the authority after the untimely passing of former executive director Lonnie Sumpter earlier this year, had planned all along to be only an interim head of the authority. However, he said he had an opportunity to take a job with an unidentified “environmental technology company” that plans to set up its headquarters in New Mexico, an opportunity that “arose imperatively”. Homans had been a major supporter of what has become Spaceport America since shortly after becoming the state economic development secretary in 2003, working with Gov. Bill Richardson and other state officials to lure Virgin Galactic, the X Prize Cup, and other space ventures to the state. A replacement for Homans has not been announced.

Spaceport America, the new commercial spaceport being developed in New Mexico, remains on schedule even though construction won’t begin until next year, state spaceport authority officials said Tuesday. Construction of the spaceport will begin in April of 2008, shortly after the state anticipates receiving a spaceport license from the FAA. The state is currently working on the environmental assessment portion of the licensing process, as well as engaging in Virgin Galactic in discussions about the spaceport design. The cost of the facility is still pegged at $198 million.

Interest in the economic boom many feel the new commercial spaceport in New Mexico will create has real estate developers making plans to build office space on speculation in the region, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. The city of Las Cruces agreed to sell 45.4 acres of land at its West Mesa Industrial Park to developer Adam Grabois, who plans to use one parcel of that land to build a 40,000-square-foot even though the building has no announced tenants yet. “I’ve heard (Gov.) Bill Richardson talk about the potential of a spaceport here in New Mexico, and right away I thought our company would be perfect to be a part of that,” Grabois told the paper, adding that he has some ties, albeit tenuous ones, with the governor. “He and I graduated from the same university, Tufts University… He and I are also members of the same fraternity there.”

This week’s issue of The Space Review features a report on plans to establish a spaceport in the unlikely locale of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There’s been some confusion about the effort since initial activities have been focused on creating an educational center in the town, but spaceport proponents tell Eric Hedman that they are serious about eventually creating a facility for horizontal-takeoff vehicles on the shores of Lake Michigan, taking advantage of a sector of reserved airspace over the lake. Why Sheboygan? Backers say that there are a wide variety of other recreational activities there, from fishing to golfing, that space tourists and their families could partake in while in the area for a space flight. But then, how compelling will those reasons be in, say, January?

…has been selected, but hasn’t been announced yet, Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, said during a luncheon speech at the ISDC Friday. “The next [tourist] flight is next year,” he said. “We have the person who is going to go but we haven’t yet disclosed their name. But it will be another exciting one, it will be another first.” Anderson also said that the current cost of an orbital flight is $25 million, in line with earlier reports about Simonyi’s flight but more than the $21.8 million price quoted by Roskosmos this week.

Anderson was also revealing few details about Space Adventures’ suborbital flight plans. The company has kept a low profile about those plans since a flurry of publicity back in early 2006. “I prefer not to comment on that too much right now,” he said. “We are still working on it. Everything costs more and takes longer, so we’ll see.” At the other extreme, he said there is still strong interest in the company’s circumlunar space flight proposal. “I have a few people who are interested,” he said, adding that he plans to work with them over the next few months to get them to formally sign up.

An effort to establish a commercial spaceport at Cecil Field, a former Navy air base near Jacksonville, Florida, has taken a step forward with an FAA review of an environmental assessment. According to the Florida Times-Union article, “no major issues” came up during the review, although there were a number of unspecified issues that the local aviation authority, which operates Cecil Field, has to address, and doesn’t anticipate completing the spaceport licensing process until some time next year.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, they’re thinking big about the future role Spaceport Okahoma might play. Noting that there is a statue of an Irish immigrant to America in both an Irish seaport and Ellis Island, an op-ed in the Edmond (Okla.) Sun suggests:

Within the next several centuries, when colonization of other planets begins, there may be a similar monument situated at the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority’s facility in Burns Flat in Washita County to commemorate those who left earth to begin new lives on other planets.

Cue the “Wide World of Sports” theme music, but watch out for that ski jump:

• The Virginian-Pilot investigates whether the Mid-Altantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) might host space tourism flights in the future. One of the problems with MARS outlined in the article is a lack of investment by Virginia and Maryland: its operating budget is only a half-million dollars a year, hardly enough for marketing, if there was much there to market at the present time. (Disclosure: I was one of the people interviewed for, and quoted in, the article.)
• An article in Arabian Business about the first UAE citizen to sign up for Virgin Galactic notes that Virgin may be looking at possible sites in the region for a spaceport “should demand for tickets from the region increase.” Given, if nothing else, the large volumes of disposable income in that region, one can only imagine that that time will come sooner rather than later.
• A Malaysian airport could become a spaceport under a proposal developed by a group led by space tourism marketing pioneer Patrick Collins. However, the article states that the proposal “was submitted in 1999″ (which suggests that not much progress has taken place in the last eight years), and that it relies on the Ascender vehicle proposed by Bristol Spaceplanes, a British company that has made no visible progress on its concept for some time (and whose web site has not been updated for nearly a year and a half).

According to the final, still-unofficial tally of votes in Tuesday’s spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, yes beat no by 270 votes, out of 17,770 votes cast. About 19 percent of registered voters in the county voted in the special election, with the spaceport tax being the only item on the ballot: county officials said that turnout, while low for a special election, was relatively high for a special election like this. Spaceport opponents, while disappointed in losing, believe they still hold the moral high ground. “It’s now at the point where we have the luxury, in two or three years, to say ‘I told you so,’” said Mitch Boyer, leader of a group that opposed the tax. “I can tell you right now [the spaceport] is not going to happen.” Two other southern New Mexico counties, Otero and Sierra, are also considering similar taxes, although it’s not clear when they would hold elections on them.

According to this morning’s Las Cruces Sun-News, the spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico officially has a 265-vote lead with 108 ballots to be reviewed. The “yes” lead initially was somewhat slimmer than earlier reported—173 instead of 204 votes—but the lead grew as the provisional ballots were reviewed and added to the tally yesterday. The results have to be officially certified, which will take place on Tuesday; barring a challenge (which didn’t appear to be in the works), the tax would officially go into effect the first of next year.

Proponents were, naturally, gratified with the outcome. “I’m proud to be a citizen of this county today,” county commissioner Bill McCamley, one of the leading supporters, told the Sun-News. In a press release (not yet posted on its web site), National Space Society executive director George Whitesides (himself a customer of spaceport tenant Virgin Galactic), noted that this “is the first time that the new industry of personal spaceflight has come before a popular vote - and the referendum’s passage is an endorsement of the industry’s economic potential.”

Opponents of the tax appeared resigned to defeat, but consoled themselves that they had put up a hard flight despite a lack of money. “I compliment the proponents, but you know, they spent a lot of money compared to our campaign, which was grassroots,” Oscar Vásquez-Butler, a county commissioner opposed to the tax, said. Opponents of the tax claimed to have spent only about $1,000, while supporters reportedly spent up to 100 times as much.