Archive for March, 2010

Article courtesy of Las Cruces Sun-News

If you are looking for work and can speak both English and Spanish, a job opportunity could be just around the corner.

On Tuesday, CyraCom is conducting a job fair and hopes to hire as many as 100 new employees at its Las Cruces interpretive center at 2303 Divot Ave. That would about double the number of workers the company employees in Las Cruces.

“You don’t even have to know how to use a computer,” said Robert Martinez, manager of the center. “Come in and get ready for on-the-site interviews. We want to fill this place up and create some jobs for Las Cruces.”

CyraCom provides language services to hospitals, health-care institutions as well as for other, non-medical clients, and needs bilingual employees, one of the reasons it opened in Las Cruces in 2006.

Martinez said the company will start classes in April to train new workers. Earlier this year he said that pay starts at $8 per hour, with benefits, but on Tuesday Martinez would not give an exact number but said that the company has raised starting pay.

Those who are interested can call (575) 525-4740. More information about the positions available can be found online .

“We’ve been getting quality candidates,” Martinez said. “We want to stay in this area and we want to hire in Las Cruces.”

Release courtesy of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS)

WhiteKnightTwo and VSS Enterprise will flyover Spaceport America at the inauguration of the runway at Spaceport America. This will be the first long distance test flight of the VG spaceship and mothership system as part of the celebrations inaugurating the completion of the runway at Virgin Galactic’s future home – Spaceport America.

A flyover on October 22 of the two craft will be a unique event enabling attendees to see both the spaceport and the vehicles. “It will be an extraordinary conclusion for Space Week in New Mexico”, said ISPCS Chair Patricia Hynes.

The updated ISPCS website contains complete information about Space Week in New Mexico where ISPCS, the leading meeting of the commercial and personal spaceflight industry conference is held.

This year’s conference will be held Wednesday-Thursday, October 20 – 21, Flyover at Spaceport America, Friday, October 22.

ISPCS is organized by the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, a member of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, administered by the NASA.

For more information on ISPCS 2010, visit www.ispcs.com.

Article courtesy of The Las Cruces Bulletin

By Marvin Tessneer

Alternative energy companies are conducting research and development projects directed toward a solar-thermal power plant to be located a mile east of the border town of Santa Teresa in Dona Ana County. The eSolar power technology company is designing a 5-megawatt project in Lancaster, California, as a plant research project for NRG Energy.

“It’s a small version of what we’re going to build in Santa Teresa,” said David Knox of NRG Energy. “It’s a process that we go through before starting actual construction. And from that project we are gaining a lot of insight that will support the building and operation of our Santa Teresa project.”

NRG is planning on breaking ground for its solar-thermal power plant later this year. It plans to have the plant operational by 2011. The Dona Ana County Commission has already approved land-use and building permits for the site.Construction is expected to bring about 400 jobs during a 14- to 16-month period and create 20 permanent jobs when the plant is fully operational, NRG officials said. NRG is planning to build its plant on 450 acres using eSolar’s concentrated solar power (CSP) technology and will be the first commercial solar-thermal power plant in New Mexico.

The technology is made up of a field of flat mirrors, called heliostats, that direct and concentrate sunlight to thermal receivers mounted on towers about 180 feet high. The concentrated sunlight heats the water in the thermal receivers to produce steam that turns turbines to generate clean electrical power. The mirrors track the sun with a calibrated system that can follow and gather the sunlight throughout the day and achieves one of the highest power-to-land ratios in the industry.

NRG plans to develop a project that, at peak capacity, will produce 92-milowatts of electricity that could supply power to about 74,000 homes. The plant will be connected to an existing 115-kilovolt El Paso Electric Company transmission line, and the company has a 20-year power purchase agreement.

The plant also would bring a new tax base and economic benefits from purchases of goods and services during construction. NRG also expects the solar-thermal plant to use same amount of water that would be consumed in a residential development.

New Mexico elected officials are pleased with the solar plans. Governor Bill Richardson said of the NRG project, “With 300 days of sun every year, a highly skilled labor force and a friendly business environment, New Mexico is well-positioned to lead the nation in solar energy production. eSolar, NRG and El Paso Electric are helping us make New Mexico’s renewable energy a potential a reality.”

U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman said, “This plant is an excellent example of the kind of projects New Mexico and the rest of the nation need to further diversify America’s energy portfolio. I compliment El Paso Electric, NRG and eSolar for working to create green jobs in New Mexico that will help to responsibly meet our growing demand for electricity.”

Article courtesy of The Las Cruces Bulletin

By Todd G. Dickson

With construction under way on the 110,152-square-foot Terminal Hangar Facility at Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic’s new space liner took to the skies for the first time carrying its rocket spaceship. On Monday, March 22, Virgin Galactic announced that its commercial manned spaceship, VSS Enterprise, successfully completed its first “captive carry” test flight.

Virgin Galactic’s system for taking passengers to suborbital space will have the double-hulled carrier jet powered aircraft – called the mother ship or “Eve” – carry the rocket portion up to 52,000 feet, where it will be released. The six-passenger spacecraft will then ignite its hybrid rocket engine to bolt to an elevation of 65 miles within 60 seconds.

Monday’s flight simply had the mother ship carry the rocket payload, but flew to an elevation of 45,000 feet during a flight that lasted nearly three hours. The elevation and duration of the first “mated” flight illustrated the confidence that Virgin Galactic has in the aircraft, said New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Steve Landeene during a presentation Tuesday, March 22, to the High Tech Consortium of Southern New Mexico.

Both vehicles are being developed for English billionaire Richard Branson by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. Founded by Burt Rutan, the company came up with a smaller version of the system to claim the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE in 2004 as the world’s first privately developed manned spacecraft to reach suborbital space. Branson bought the rights for the technology and is working with Scaled Composites to create a fleet of space liners for Virgin Galactic, which will take passengers to suborbital space for $250,000 a flight by 2011, should future testing go well.

Virgin Galactic will be the anchor tenant at Spaceport America, and the Terminal Hangar Facility is being built for its operations. Landeene said the foundation for the facility’s steel towers has been laid and the building is on track to be turned over to Virgin Galactic by early 2011.

Meanwhile, Landeene said work continues to progress rapidly on the 10,000 foot runway, which will primarily be used for the Virgin Galactic take-offs and landings. But the sturdy asphalt and concrete runway can handle any kind of aircraft and Landeene said he can foresee its use for specially modified 727s to take people on zero-gravity simulated flights.

Landeene also noted progress on other work at the $198 million spaceport in the desert between Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences, including the spaceport’s fuel storage facility, wastewater treatment system, water access and other utilities, such as electricity. Though the spaceport is tapping traditional electricity, Landeene said the goal is to generate all of the spaceport’s energy needs at the site through renewable energy technologies.

With 12 of the 14 major project contracts awarded, “we are about a year away from having a full spaceport ready for business,” he said. All of those contracts have gone to New Mexico companies, though Landeene acknowledged the criticism that many of the jobs have gone to Albuquerque- based companies. Never the less, Landeene said the work done to date has created more than 600 jobs in the area, which he said is buoying local businesses and government through the lean economy. He estimated that the spaceport activity has already brought New Mexico more than $18 million in revenue that it wouldn’t have had without the project. “The return on investment is really quite tremendous,” he said.

The spaceport will continue to host other customers, such as UP Aerospace, which has conducted a number of launches with its low-cost sounding rocket, including research and development tests for Lockheed Martin and MOOG FTS. Landeene said he expects to soon be making other announcements about significant private space companies coming to Spaceport America.

With NASA rethinking its mission, private companies providing affordable access to space will become more significant partners in the future, Landeene said. NASA recently announced it intends to spend $75 million on development of suborbital vehicles.

It also helped that the Legislature passed and Governor Bill Richardson signed into law informed consent legislation, which defines the passengers as participants who know they are taking a risk in these private space flights. Landeene said the law doesn’t eliminate liability to the companies for negligence or damage to other property, but it does make doing business in New Mexico more attractive in the area of private spaceflight.

State Senator Steve Fischmann agreed with Landeene that many northern lawmakers have a “jaundiced view” of the spaceport until they learn more about research-and-development potential that’s possible along with the space tourism.

Landeene admitted some won’t be able to get behind the spaceport until they’ve seen it work and produce more local activity. He said his office continues to investigate other opportunities for providing more “supply chain” business to the local area, as well as packaging tourist experiences. The spaceport’s construction, however, is the primary task of his office, he noted.

Article courtesy of The Las Cruces Bulletin

By Kristine Sandrick

Capturing the sun’s energy using mirrors to fuel southern New Mexico and west Texas homes was the hot topic of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance annual appreciation luncheon Friday, March 12, at Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces.

Luncheon keynote speaker Jim Shandalov, eSolar‘s vice president of business development, talked about his company’s new power plant under construction in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The company plans to break ground this spring and have the power center operating by summer 2011.

Shandalov said the 92-megawatt plant is being constructed in unincorporated Dona Ana County, 1 mile north of the Mexican border off the Pete Domenici Highway.

The Santa Teresa plant will use 390,000 mirrors to collect energy, and the turbines will be connected to El Paso Electric power lines. Shandalov said the electricity will be enough to power 74,000 homes in peak production.

The company’s concentrating solar power (CSP) technology uses a field of small, flat mirrors – called heliostats – to concentrate sunlight onto a thermal receiver mounted on solar power towers approximately 180 feet high. The captured sunlight heats water in a thermal receiver to produce steam that powers a traditional turbine generator and produces electricity. The eSolar technology leverages a highly accurate system to track the sun over the course of the day.

Due to its modular design and preassembled components, the eSolar solution allows plants to be sited on private land parcels near existing transmission lines and points of consumption.

“It’s a 500-acre site, which is a lot less land and uses less steel than a typical plant, but will create more processing power,” he said. “There will be more (boiler) towers and more mirrors than at our 5-megawatt Sun Tower plant in Lancaster (Calif.)” In addition to the Lancaster plant, which opened in August 2009, eSolar has solar energy partnerships in India, China and South Africa.

Idealab – an Internet search engine company that was bought by Yahoo! – created eSolar just three years ago in Pasadena, California.

“New Mexico in general has done such a tremendous job to bring us here,” Shandalov said. “That’s what brought us here. The site is directly adjacent to El Paso Electric lines and Dona Ana County is supplying the water for the coolers.”

He added that there is a good workforce available to fill the 400 jobs created during the 14- to 16-month construction period.

Shandalov said the plant is built to last 30 years and the only major maintenance required is keeping the mirrors clean and replacing them as necessary.

Also during Friday’s luncheon, MVEDA’s chief executive officer Davin Lopez presented the nonprofit agency’s new marketing look, which he said will help southern New Mexico better attract national site selectors.

“Our goal is to make this area competitive across the country. When people think of New Mexico, they think of how rural it is so we want to broaden what they think of us as a region,” Lopez said.

MVEDA’s new logo emphasizes the “MV,” which stands for Mesilla Valley, and clearly identifies the area’s location with the state. Lopez also presented a new MVEDA website that emphasizes the availability of “the right space” for both commercial land and aerospace development. The website also has a language translator so it can be read by anyone anywhere in the world.

For more information, visit www. nmborderplex.com.