Spaceport board names new CEO
Dan Hicks spent 34 years in White Sands leadership roles
A top official at White Sands Missile Range has been named chief executive officer of Spaceport America.
Dan Hicks, deputy executive director for White Sands, will replace Christine Anderson, who this summer announced she was leaving. Spaceport Authority board members approved the appointment Thursday.
Hicks’ selection came after “careful consideration of several highly qualified candidates,” said Rick Holdridge, Spaceport board chair. He said Hicks would take over the job by November.
Hicks has been at White Sands for 34 years, starting in 1982 as a test conductor within the Materiel Test Directorate. He eventually became technical director of White Sands and moved on to deputy executive director in 2013.
“In these leadership roles, he was responsible for assisting the commanding general and the executive director in the operations of the entire (missile range) with over $11 billion of infrastructure and a noontime population of approximately 12,000 personnel,” according to a news release.
Anderson resigned in July, after working at the commercial spaceport since 2011, about the time it got its start. The futuristic spaceport near Truth or Consequences has struggled to support itself, hurt in part by delays by anchor tenant Virgin Galactic.
“I am so excited and grateful for the opportunity to lead the great team at Spaceport America,” Hicks said in the release. “I have always believed in Spaceport America. It is a national treasure that is important to our state’s econ-
omy and our nation’s commercial space industry.”
A graduate of Las Cruces High School, Hicks received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University and received an honorary selection to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Academy at NMSU.
New Mexico taxpayers paid for the state-of-the-art hangar and runway as part of a plan by British billionaire Richard Branson and former Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat.
Branson’s Virgin Galactic is paying about $1.6 million a year to occupy the terminal, but it’s not clear when the company will launch its first flights to space from New Mexico.
More than 700 would-be astronauts have bought $250,000 tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic to space and back from Spaceport America.
With Virgin Galactic’s start date still uncertain, the $218.5 million taxpayer-funded facility has been shopping for new customers in the emerging commercial space segment, including in space launch testing, ground satellite operations and drone flight testing, according to a business plan rolled out last year.