Today’s Las Cruces Sun-News reports that problems conducting an environmental assessment have led to another delay for New Mexico’s Spaceport America. The report is vague about what exactly the problem is, but apparently it involves some sort of potential conflict of interest with New Mexico State University Physical Science Laboratory and some transfer of data being used for the environmental assessment. “There were some balls dropped” during that data transfer, in the words of Spaceport Authority chair Kelly O’Donnell, requiring the work to be redone.
Groundbreaking for the spaceport is now planned for November 2008. While the article states that groundbreaking has previously been planned for the first quarter of this year, during the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight in Las Cruces in October officials were talking about a groundbreaking around October 2008: either this does not appear to be that significant a delay, or that delay had been factored into their schedules for some time.
[…] to problems with the environmental impact statement (EIS) (hat tip Dick’s Rocket Dungeon and Personal Spaceflight). The EIS is required as part of FAA licensing for a launch facility: (b) Environmental. An […]