Spaceport America: From Nowhere to Out There

Spaceport America is under construction in some of the most desolate real estate in New Mexico. But it may soon become the launch pad for commercial space travel.

The rest of the world might remain skeptical -- commercial space travel still seems the stuff of Hollywood and sci-fi novels -- but a core group of scientists and engineers are working to turn New Mexico into the Silicon Valley of the emerging space industry.

One believer is Jerry Larson, a genial rocket scientist, co-founder of Up Aerospace, and the designer of SpaceLoft XL, a 20-foot-long, 785-pound rocket designed to fly commercial cargo into suborbital space.