The 2200 residents of Van Horn, Texas, US, seem to be embracing the idea of having a spaceport in their backyard.
Blue Origin, a company headed by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has applied to build a launch site for its planned New Shepard space rocket about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Van Horn.
A prototype of the rocket could make up to 10 suborbital test flights in 2006. And the rocket - which would take off and land vertically - could be ready to take passengers to the edge of space and back by as early as 2010.
But first the US Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial spaceflight, must approve a draft of an environmental impact assessment that the company recently filed.
On Tuesday, the town of Van Horn held a hearing about the environmental impact of building the launch site on 7527 hectares (18,600 acres) of a larger piece of property owned by Bezos, which is known as "Corn Ranch".
"People are excited about it," says cattle rancher Ron Helm, who spoke at the hearing and used to raise cattle on ranches abutting the proposed spaceport. "We know a lot of the Blue Origin people. They've been honest about their dealings."
The region already sees a fair amount of tourists who visit the nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Big Bend National Park. But a spaceport could bring even more tourists - and their dollars - to the area.
"Who would have thought Van Horn, Texas, would be on the cutting edge of space technology?" Helm told New Scientist.
Blue Origin has kept its plans for the rocket and launch site largely under wraps until the environmental assessment draft was released in June. "We're not going into any details beyond the environmental assessment," company spokesman Bruce Hicks says.
But the assessment shows that at least three tourists could fly on the rocket, which would consist of a propulsion module with a crew capsule on top.
Tourists would experience a flight lasting nearly 10 minutes. The rocket would fire its engines for two minutes, then coast to an altitude of 99,060 metres. Should something go wrong during launch, the crew capsule could detach from the propulsion module and parachute back to Earth.
But if the launch was successful, the rocket would then fall back to Earth. It would restart its engines at an altitude of several hundred metres, when it was less than 15 seconds from landing.
The company aims to have its rocket make a precision, vertical landing on a concrete pad 6.1 kilometres (3.8 miles) away from the launch pad. It also says it could make about one suborbital launch per week depending on market demand.
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