Quietly, SpaceShipTwo marches toward reality

Editor's Note: My new space column runs Monday in the FLORIDA TODAY newspaper, but you'll be able to see it here early on Sundays. Thanks, and please click comment below to weigh in or e-mail me at jkelly@floridatoday.com.

Lots of people will be flying in space even after the space shuttles retire.

Florida's Space Coast will lament the end of the shuttle program and the loss of thousands of great jobs. But, 2010 could mark the start of one of the most exciting periods in the history of human space flight.

Gigantic leaps forward in our ability to fly people in space are coming and they're coming fast.

One of the most exciting is quietly marching toward history.

Out west, in the deserts of California and New Mexico, work is progressing on a launch system, a spaceship and a spaceport for the international partnership that is the odds-on favorite to become the world's first spaceline for tourists.

In Mojave, the loss of three lives in a test-firing accident slowed but did not stop the development of SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.

The aircraft that will carry the spaceship to its "launch site" in the sky has already broken records in test flights. The football-shaped spacecraft could be rolled out for public viewing this fall and could make test flights soon after.

The British company says hundreds of people have made deposits on the $200,000 tickets for one of six seats aboard the spaceliner once test flights prove its safe.

It's hard to believe it's been five years since designer Burt Rutan paired with visionaries like Richard Branson and Paul Allen for the history-making flights of SpaceShipOne.

In New Mexico, Spaceport America is about to spring up on ground where photographer Craig Bailey and I found little more than jackrabbits, snakes and woodpeckers a couple years ago.

Back then, Craig and I went miles off road, four-wheeling over dangerous road, to get to a dusty, desolate spot not marked on official maps - a place New Mexico was dubbing the future of space travel. We found a slab of concrete and some sheds at a place where government officials were telling us they would erect a Jetsons-style spaceport as a U.S. launch base for the Virgin Galactic fleet.

Claims that flights might start in 2010 drew snickers and skepticism at first, but take a look now. Roads have been built, utilities extended and financial challenges overcome. Next month, workers will break ground on a spaceport that once was a small-state governor's pipe dream.

To be sure, Virgin Galactic representatives stress, "We are not in a race." The partners aim to take as long as necessary to test SpaceShipTwo before starting flights with tourists on board. But even the early piloted test flights will be exciting.

Other space-tourism ventures are making progress too, but none with this kind of financial and technical pedigree behind them.

You might say, too bad it's not happening here. But, I foresee big spillover benefits for Brevard County.

Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral remain the best-outfitted and most-storied space launch bases in the world. Branson, for instance, has called the shuttle landing strip at KSC a good place for a SpaceShipTwo launch site once the spaceliner is up and running.

Don't worry too much about where the breakthroughs happen. A rapid expansion in the capability to launch people and things to space inevitably boosts the aerospace business here.