The New Space Race; With the demand for white-knuckle rides into the stratosphere expected to soar, countries are vying to build spaceports for rocket-bound tourists.

Byline: Michael Hastings and Allan Madrid

The future of the space industry is a 70-square-kilo-meter piece of desert in New Mexico near the White Sands Missile Range, about an hour's drive from the nearest city, Las Cruces. The skies are clear 320 days of the year--ideal for flight--and the only marks of civilization are a 22-meter runway and a rocket launchpad. The idea is that civilian passengers from around the world will arrive by plane and depart straight upward into outer space. "I've always been a space nut," says Gov. Bill Richardson, who recently broke ground on the $225 million Spaceport America, which counts Virgin mogul Richard Branson among its investors and customers. "On commercial space travel, I want us to be first."

The next space race is underway. The market for commercial space tourism is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenues by 2020, according to a study released last month by Research Reports International, a market-research firm based in Evergreen, Colorado. Billionaire entrepreneurs like Branson and Microsoft's Paul Allen are looking to fill that demand, partnering with governments to build launching pads and training facilities around the globe, and thrill seekers are already lining up to buy tickets. While most of the world's 35 functioning spaceports are controlled by governments, at least eight private ones are in the planning or construction stages from Singapore to Sweden (graphic). "The market is wide open for private players," says Steven Morris, president of Research Reports International.

So far, the lack of launching pads hasn't been an issue because space trips are so few and far between. That's going to change. According to Futron, a Bethesda, Maryland-based consulting firm, 15,000 passengers will be willing to pay $700 million per year by 2021 merely for a white-knuckle ride and a few minutes of weightlessness. With entrepreneurs now planning on opening up a market for cheaper flights--and more of them--the demand for launchpads is expected to soar. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is currently reviewing proposals to build commercial spaceports in several states, including California, Wisconsin and Texas. In June it approved a license for a spaceport built on a former military base in Oklahoma that is expected to put passengers into space by 2008.

Virgin Galactic has chosen the New Mexico spaceport as its headquarters. The ...