It's early and the normally hard, dusty ground is still wet from the violent thunderstorm which blew in overnight, threatening to scupper the world's first private space fair: The X Prize Cup. Or rather, the 'Countdown to the X-Prize Cup'.
 The event, inspired by the barnstorming air races of the early 20th Century, was envisaged as a grand contest between the dozen or so private spaceflight companies. But none was quite ready for a public fight, unfortunately, so the event was rebranded as this emerging industry's first big public showcase. If you're in the market for an extraterrestrial excursion, this is the place to go shopping.
 The venue is the Las Cruces International Airport: a little local airport with a big name. It's a temporary home for what is intended to be an annual gathering. From 2007 the X Prize Cup will be held at the Southwest Regional Spaceport 45 miles North of here Like so much in the private spaceflight world, the spaceport is not yet reality. For now it's just a tract of earmarked land not far from the military White Sands Missile Range.
  But New Mexico is historically familiar with extraterrestrial traffic, both outbound (a captured Nazi V2 was first rocket to enter space from the state) and, if the UFOlogists are right about Roswell, inbound too. And, most importantly, it has a state government prepared to foot the bill for the new facility in the hope of getting in on the ground floor of an industry which might just make the computer boom look like a village shop.
  In fact much of the money fuelling the new space startups comes from the computer industry. Without $20 million from Microsoft founder Paul Allen, it's unlikely Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne would ever have collected the $10 million X Prize. A replica of SpaceShipOne is among the hardware on display at Las Cruces airport (The real thing is now on display at the Smithsonian Institute).
 From the airport approach road, you can see several sharp rocket noses pointing skyward. It looks like an intergalactic car park. Most are mock-ups but some have flown, or will fly in the near future. The police presence is huge, the entire state's law enforcement seems to be here for the show. We're welcomed by a sniffer dog who snuffles around the tyres of our hire car checking for explosives.
 Beyond the exhibition area is the runway and half a kilometre beyond that is the launch site for today's scheduled take-offs and rocket firings. A tall, wire mesh fence has been erected to keep the expected 20,000 visitors out of danger. On one side lie the full-scale models, glossy brochures, artists's impressions and ambitious promises, on the other, empty ground and an open challenge. It seems to draw a line between the reality and the dream, the present and the future.
 Facing the incoming crowds are a stage and an immense 'Jumbotron' screen, the kind you see at rock concerts. Behind, the serrated peaks of the Organ Mountains in the distance are becoming clear as the weather brightens. A media truck, loaded with TV cameras serves as a reminder that this was conceived as a PR event, a manufactured space story more broadcaster-friendly than a remote landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
 Swelling orchestral music booms from the sound system as video clips pay extravagant homage to Burt Rutan, repeating words like 'genius' and 'pioneer' ad nauseum. Speaker after speaker takes the microphone to invoke the spirits of Charles Lindburgh and the Wright Brothers, with all the stage-managed, star-spangled fervour of a religious rally or a Hollywood awards ceremony. It's a tremendously cheesy spectacle and at its centre is the figure of Dr Peter Diamandas, the man who conceived and coordinated the Ansari X Prize.
 With melodramatic intonation, grand, sweeping arm gestures and much faraway gazing into the ozone, he delivers an act worthy of a TV evangelist. Which is, in a sense, exactly what he is. A man with a finger in just about every slice of space pie, Diamandis has a powerful personal interest in what he calls the 'personal spaceflight revolution'. 
 The medical doctor turned businessman has invested considerable sums of his own money in space-related ventures including Space Adventures, the outfit that arranged Tito, Shuttleworth and Olsen's trips to the space station, a company offering weightless flights in Zero-G aircraft and his latest project, Rocket Racing (NASCAR with rocket-planes, apparently). He's striding around backstage, taking calls and barking orders at subordinates when I grab my chance to launch a few questions at him.
 "Is the private space industry real, or just a rich man's hobby?' I ask.
 "It's happening right now," he replies without hesitation.
 Will the big money be in human payloads, or sending satellites into orbit?
 "It's in tourism and entertainment. By a huge amount."
 Will this entertainment be safe?
 "Accidents will happen. In the early days this is a risky business. It's a new industry and a new frontier. And the people who don't want to take the risk shouldn't be flying," he says with a cold logic. "Around 50,000 people die on the roads every year and we don't stop driving. To hold space to a different standard is ridiculous.
 "Our job is to educate the media that when someone dies in space, that's OK," he continues with unsettling nonchalance.
 The other big question, is of course, cost. Virgin Galactic is not the first company to sell tickets for suborbital trips. That honour went to a Seattle-based company called Zegrahm Space Voyages, which took more than a hundred bookings at $98,000 per person in the late Nineties. The flights, scheduled for 2001, still haven't materialised.
 "Sir Richard came in and doubled the price, which is fine but I think the first one or two players will enjoy that margin and it will then very quickly drop below $100,000 and below $50,000 after that," says Diamandis. In fact many in the industry believe it will drop as low as $10,000 within a decade
 And despite Branson's prize-winning technology and financial might, Virgin may not even be the first to fly tourists into space. "It will be somebody else first," predicts Diamandis. "I think SpaceShipTwo is a magnificent design and they will be one of the strongest companies but they may not be the first."
 Diamandis' tip for the top is the Rocketplane XP Spaceplane, a heavily modified Learjet 24 equipped with a V-tail, delta wing and a liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine alongside the normal jet engine.
 "We take off from the runway under jet engines we fly up to 20,000ft under jet power then we light up the rocket engine and have a 90 second rocket burn that takes us up to space, over the top at 100km and re-enter, says Chuck Lauer, Rocketplane's co-founder and marketing chief.
 "We fly back through the re-entry corridor in a supersonic glide, restart our jet engines at 20,000 ft and then have a powered landing back at the Oklahoma spaceport."
 The Spaceplane's cabin is pressurised, so a full-blown space suit isn't required. Instead passengers get a nifty little black flight suit with their name embroidered on the breast pocket. At the controls will be Captain John 'Bone' Herrington, NASA's only Native American astronaut and one of the first space veterans to take a job in the private sector.
 If all goes to plan, he will pilot the first test flights in late 2006 and will flying commercial passengers by Autumn 2007.
 "Obviously the Virgin marketing behemoth is hogging all the public press but we have had some reservations,"says Chuck, who sees the rivalry in David and Goliath terms, or to use his folksy phrase 'Mighty Virgin versus little ol' Rocketplane of Oklahoma'.
 Like Virgin, Rocketplane offers an experience more like a luxury private jet flight than a blast-off in the spirit of the early space pioneers.
 At the other end of the spectrum is the Canadian da Vinci project. Once the front-runners in the X Prize, the da Vinci launch method uses a giant helium balloon for the first part of the ascent. It's an innovative approach but not one that lends itself to commercialisation.
 The Wild Fire combined capsule/rocket stage is shaped like a 20ft-long .45 bullet or a pepper shaker. It's painted a drab green shade that's not doing it any favours, visually. In fact, parked next to some of the gleaming mock-ups at Las Cruces, it looks like a suborbital septic tank.
 "That's high temperature aerospace epoxy primer paint," insists Brian Feeney, the self-taught engineer leading da Vinci's volunteer-run team, "It's not that Canadians have a lack of taste, we just haven't put the finishing coat on yet."
 But it's not just the outside that could use a makeover. The interior, all rough edges and exposed carbon fibre, wouldn't look out of place in a stock car. But at least it's the real thing.
 "This is not a mock-up. This is real hardware," says Feeney. From a real hardware store, by the looks of it.
 "What you're looking at is going into space," he says proudly, "We're approximately a year away from our first manned flight. We'll float to an altitude of 70,000 feet below the world's largest reusable helium balloon. We'll light up our hybrid engine and 18,000lbs of thrust are going to take us all the way up."
 "Who's 'us'?" I ask. "I'm the guy going up," he says.
  Are you nervous?
 "Not nervous at all," he says, despite the fact that the only testing has been carried out by 'Homer', the empty space suit strapped into one of the three seats. Around Homer's limp neck dangles a pair of furry dice signed by actor Kiefer Sutherland.
 "I met Kiefer in a bar in Toronto one night," explains Brian, "A random meeting. We slugged back about five or six Jack Daniels and cokes together. I just introduced myself and we got talking about Rocket 101 and I said 'Here, sign the dice and I'll take 'em into space'."
 An English accent stands out in a place like Las Cruces and I soon find myself talking to Steve Bennett, CEO of Cheshire-based Starchaser Industries, a stocky, goatee-bearded bloke with tattooed forearms and a no-nonsense air about him.
 "I always had this dream to do this but it wasn't until '96 when I heard about the X Prize, that I started coming out of the closet and going public," says Steve, "Because, you know what it's like back in the UK, one guy stands up and says 'I'm going to go into space' and everybody thinks 'Oh yeah, Wallace and Gromit!'"
 Steve is sticking with old-fashioned ground-launched rockets, the same basic design that took the Americans to orbit and the moon in the Sixties.
 "That's what we can sell," he says, "Branson and Rutan have got this little aeroplane that goes higher and higher and higher, so it's great for a grandma or something but if you want to be John Glenn or Neil Armstrong, you come with us, you put your spacesuit on, we strap you down, you're sitting there on your back and then, bang, off you go. A real astronaut experience."
 Steve was five years old when Armstrong walked on the moon and, by his own admission, 'watched too many episodes of Thunderbirds'. It's no coincidence he's named his tiny prototype three-man capsule the 'Thunderstar'.   As his Starchaser rockets have grown bigger and more powerful, Bennett has run out of UK launch sites. Fed up with driving a truck out on the Mersey Estuary flats and racing to get airborne before the tide comes in, he's moving his rocket-building and launch operation to Las Cruces.
 "The UK's just too small," he says, "And it's a nightmare trying to get permission."
 John Carmack is more famous among computer gamers than space enthusiasts. But the software genius behind Doom and Quake has already spent $2.5 million of his own money  about the price of a typical NASA study -- building and testing a dozen different experimental craft. He's preparing to launch one of these, a ten feet high hovering rocket that takes off and lands on its tail like a proper Dan Dare space ship, later this afternoon.
 "Things are flying, they're up in the air, working, and fundamentally there is no real difference between what we're going to fly today and a vehicle that could go all the way to orbit. We're not that far off," says Carmack, a skinny, bespectacled character brimming with nervous energy who despite his success still looks more like a stereotypical computer geek than multimillionaire.
 Carmack's company, Armadillo Aerospace, is already building a version capable of reaching 100km altitudes and claims it will be ready for manned flights by end of 2006.
 "It's gotta be like riding the elevator," he says. "It's gotta be something that you just get in, fly up, get down, get off. Not something where you've gotta have your crew out here huddling over the thing like a bunch of ants on a mound, prepping it as if it's the first thing you've done in months and you're scared it's not gonna work. It's gotta become routine."
 Regular sub-orbital flights are a necessary stepping stone but longer-term the real goal is orbital flight: The point above the earth's atmosphere where, if you turn the engines off, you will circle the earth forever, like Major Tom sitting in his tin can.
 Most industry insiders expect the first orbital flights within five years. But only one X Prize Cup exhibitor  tSpace  is building the hardware to make it happen. Formed a year ago with $6m of NASA backing to develop an alternative to the ageing space shuttle, tSpace came up with the Crew Transfer Vehicle or CXV. President David Gump shows me around a replica of the CXV's four man capsule. It's more spacious than some London flats I've dwelt in. Cleaner, certainly.
 "It's a pretty roomy," he says, "Not like a Soyuz capsule where you've got your knees in your chin."
 Launched at altitude from beneath a jet, like Rutan's SpaceShips, the CXV could reach orbit for $20 million by 2009 with continued NASA funding. So our initial per person ticket price will be $5 million. But by about 2014, our ticket price would be down to about the $2.5 million dollar range," estimates Gump.
 "The challenge is really not technological. We've been going into space for 40 years now. The challenge is can you get the cost down and the safety up."
 Could the CXV take tourists to the moon, I ask? Sure it can, says Gump. As a rule of thumb the moon is about 11 times harder than earth orbit," he explains, "So multiply our £5m or £2.5m by 11 and that will get you your landing on the moon ticket: $25 million."
 Billionaires only need apply then?
 "Quite a few billionaires would think that was quite a cool thing to drop at the next cocktail party: 'You may have just played at Pebble Beach but I just walked on the moon...'"
 Back on earth things are not going to plan A. Las Cruces, we have a problem. Several problems: VIP guests Buzz Aldrin and the New Mexico Governor fail to show; advertised Zero-G flights, skydivers and vintage aircraft flybys don't get off the ground, and whipping 40mph winds prevent smaller rockets from launching. Armadillo Aerospace bravely lifts off but its remote-controlled craft reaches an altitude of just 20 feet, hovers briefly, then tips over trying to land.
 But the lightweight, Burt Rutan-designed XCOR E-Z Rocket plane is more successful, flying twice to a soundtrack of stirring, celestial music from the movie The Rocketeer. Its pilot, former NASA astronaut Rick Searfoss, is the rock star of the day, mobbed by autograph-hungry children  and few parents -- after he emerges from the bubble cockpit.
 The fun and games continue when Starchaser's attempt to static fire its Churchill rocket erupts in an explosion which sets the grass alight and sends a plume of black smoke spiralling into the sky.
 "We wanted to do a grand finale for the X Prize Cup so we thought we'd blow our engine up," deadpans Steve Bennett from the stage, thinking on his feet. "In the world of rocket science, you can learn a lot from an anomaly like this."
 But watching the fire crew extinguish the orange flames, I can't help thinking I'm glad I wasn't sitting on top of that anomaly when it blew. That's a real astronaut experience no-one needs. Another spontaneous comedy moment entertains the crowds as they queue to leave. The winds which have been gusting all day, grow too strong for two giant display balloons, painted like Mars and the Earth. Suddenly ripped free of their tether ropes, Mars pops with a startling bang and the Earth bounces away, landing on a Virgin Galactic employee. Nobody is hurt but maybe the Earth's trying to tell us something. Maybe she's warning us not to leave just yet.

© Richard Fleury 2005. A version of this story originally appeared in Mazda Magazine.