Company Must Halt Construction If Remains, Artifacts Found On Site

Could the first privately-owned spaceport in the United States be located in southwest Texas? Could be... as Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' proposed suborbital space launch center near the town of Van Horn moved one step closer to opening this week, after receiving a passing grade on an FAA environmental impact study.

MSNBC reports the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued Blue Origin its finding of no significant impact on Tuesday, along with a final environmental assessment for the site, which is being built on a ranch owned by Bezos.

As part of the approval process for its plans to launch its New Shepard launch vehicle from the site, Blue Origin agreed to halt construction should crews uncover any artifacts or remains that required preservation.

As Aero-News reported in July, Blue Origin aims to ultimately send the New Shepard --  modelled on the single-stage Delta Clipper Experimental (shown below) and Delta Clipper Experimental Advanced (DC-XA) vehicles developed by the Department of Defense and NASA in the 90s -- on commercial spaceflights to altitudes greater than 325,000 feet. The company will start out with a series of low altitude tests, and build on those.

While the company hasn't completed development of the vehicle just yet, Bezos said Blue Origin hopes to begin flight testing by the end of this year, in anticipation of full-scale commercial spaceflights launching in 2010.

FMI: www.blueorigin.com