LAS CRUCES Less than 10 years ago, all the talk about the commercial space flight industry was conceptual. Today, it's about the five Ws who, what, where, when and why.

New Mexico has been a major player in the growth of the industry. It is preparing to start operations of Spaceport America, which is supposed to signal the start of everyday people having opportunities to fly commercially into space. Commercial space flight has already started, with cargo and payloads delivered to the International Space Station this summer.

To keep the synergy going, commercial space flight leaders will gather in Las Cruces this week for the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. The symposium will be a two-day affair, Wednesday and Thursday at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, 4100 Dripping Springs Road, but other events associated with the symposium will also be conducted Tuesday and Friday.

"The personal and commercial space flight industry has come a long way since those early days," said Pat Hynes, symposium chairwoman, and director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium. "We have again brought together some of the most pre-eminent people in the world who are part of this exciting industry to share their knowledge, insights and visions."

A veritable who's who of personal and commercial space flight industry will be involved in this year's symposium. There will be 40 speakers at the conference, including Lori Garver,

Gov. Susana Martinez, and White Sands Missile Range commander Brig. Gen. Gwen Bingham will also be keynote speakers during the symposium. Bingham's speech, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, will be her first public appearance in Las Cruces since taking command at WSMR last month.

Martinez's speech will be at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

"The list of people who will be speaking is impressive," Hynes said. "In this day and time, when the economy has prompted so many to curtail travel and appearances at conferences or symposiums, their willingness to come and participate says a lot about how much, and how well, this industry is progressing. The marketplace has been evolving, things have changed enormously."

Las Crucens Raja Taylor has attended several past symposiums, and said every speech and panel discussion is interesting.

"There's no way you could come from a symposium and not learned something," Taylor said. "Because so much of this has only been conceptual until now, it's fascinating to realize how far we've come in such a short period of time and where all of this new technology is going."

Go here to read the rest:

Space flight leaders gather in Las Cruces for symposium