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Welcome to Guyana circa May 2000. Spoede walks into the nation's federal government office in the steamy capital of Georgetown, briefcase in hand and sweat under armpits. Behind him, the crowd of protesters are chanting, waving signs, displaying red rage for cameras and reporters. They are a mixed bag of environmentalists, indigenous Indians, and Guayanese opposition party members, all dedicated to scuttling the South American country's deal with Beal Aerospace. "All this, for little ole me?" Spoede says of the thoughts going through his head as he walked into the building to put signatures on the deal that would create a spaceport in one of the hemisphere's smallest and poorest nations. If building a rocket program from scratch was a tough haul, building a spaceport in a Third World country was next to impossible. Spoede was the lead negotiator with the country, pitching an ambitious 21st-century project that may have dragged the nation from its 19th-century economy. Spoede's life took a turn for the adventurous when he signed up with Beal. He graduated from the University of Texas' law school in 1981 and practiced commercial law in New Mexico for nine years. In 1990, he moved to Washington, D.C., to spend three years with the Department of Defense during the administration of Bush the Elder, buying "inferior products at higher costs" for the U.S. military. By 1993, he was back in Texas, in private practice in Dallas. Then, in 1998, he bought a newspaper, and his life changed. "I read about the company in the paper and thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever heard of," he says. Spoede felt a passion for science but says he "wasn't smart enough" to pursue it as a career. The best he could do was get as close as possible. Beal's vision drew him like a kitten to an open paper bag. His enthusiasm and Defense Department experience landed him the unadvertised job as corporate counsel, spokesman, and all-around go-to guy. "I got lucky," Spoede says simply. That luck brought him to some strange places, including a desert island that was Beal Aerospace's first choice for a spaceport home. It was called Sombrero Island, a sad 95-acre rock about 100 miles from St. Croix, belonging to the island nation of Anguilla. Sombrero Island is a simple lump of coral and rock with a lonely lighthouse staffed with even lonelier lighthouse keepers. Beal Aerospace representatives would sleep on the tip of the island, as far from the squirrelly keepers as possible, Spoede says. There are no trees or shrubs on Sombrero. The Dutch had already raped Sombrero Island when they strip-mined it for bird guano. It used to be shaped like its "hat" namesake, but all that remains is the brim. The Dutch mining operation and severe weather flattened the only parts that peaked well above sea level. Besides the lighthouse keepers and rocketeers, there is only one other form of life that finds Sombrero appealing: birds. The island is a sometime roosting spot for boobies and terns, and environmentalists were scared that the sporadic rocket launches would have scared them away. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and BirdLife International were two groups on the forefront of the lobbies against the Beal proposal. "If one of those things explodes, we're not sure anything would survive," Jim Stevenson, a spokesman for the RSPB, told a newspaper at the time. (The plight of the lighthouse keepers was never mentioned.) "I always thought the environmental concerns were bogus," Spoede says. An environmental assessment by a Washington firm hired by Beal stated Sombrero was not unique as a nesting site, has no endangered species, and provides nesting sites to a very small percentage of Caribbean seabirds. A decision to build a headquarters and manufacturing plant in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands was also met with flak. A handful of environmentalists along with historic preservationists defending a historic slave plantation protested the plant, where the rockets would be assembled and fitted with customer satellites before being shipped via barge to Sombrero for launch. The Caribbean plans were scrapped after a judge ruled that the assembly plant land had been donated for use as a public recreational area. The Sombrero launch site was nixed when other nonbird-related problems became apparent. The real problem with Sombrero Island, Spoede says, was not the boobies but the weather. Periodically, the ocean reclaims most of the island, rising up so far so fast that only the lighthouse remains above water. The disappointment was real. Artist renderings of Beal launches hanging in the defunct headquarters always show a rocket blasting from the lifeless rock of Sombrero. The rocket is rising from plumes of smoke with "Beal Aerospace" stamped across the sides, checkered bands painted on its frame so that the brains in the launch command center can tell if the craft is spinning correctly. The new plan was centered on Guyana, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, ailing for industrial growth. The nation, desperate as it is, came with its own set of domestic and international problems. The plan would have changed the political and economic landscape of Guyana, especially the Essequibo region along the northeast coast. The government sold Beal 26,000 acres of land for $1 an acre and leased another 75,000 acres for an annual $3 an acre. Beal was also to pay $400,000 in compensation to the indigenous people who would have to relocate out of the flight path of the spacecraft, called the "footprint." Also included was $25,000 to $100,000 per launch, depending on the number of launches per year. Opposition politicians and civic groups complained their natural resources and indigenous groups were being sold cheaply. Spoede says most of the Indian families were eager for a move and regarded the deal as a windfall. So did the administration in charge. "Guyana needs a project like that," says Terry Reis, honorary consul for Guyana in Houston, who helped coordinate negotiations with Beal Aerospace. She rarely puts the spaceport project in past tense, even though it is obviously deceased. "The project is wonderful, but the opposition is always in opposition." The assembly and launch facilities would have spawned an entire city surrounding the launch site, an economic spaceport boomtown where now sits swampland and tiny Indian villages. Spoede says the facility would have birthed a city with electricity, running water, jobs from the support economy, and an environmentally protected area. The final spaceport price tag was estimated at between $100 million and $300 million. Beal Aerospace this time hired Peter Pritchard, a well-respected researcher with Chelonian Research Institute, an international environmental protection group, to validate its claim that the space launches wouldn't hurt sea turtles that lay eggs on the nearby beaches. Other problems proved out of the reach of hired consultants. Guyana may be small, poor, and virtually toothless, but that doesn't mean it can't tangle with its neighbors. In fact, it shares its corner of South America with two hostile states. Like hungry grackles, they fight over scraps of industry and resources that attract foreign investment. It takes a brave company to bring South American border politics into their business plan. In 1998, Guyana and also-tiny Suriname came close to war over giant offshore oil fields. During the conflict, Surinamese gunboats moved in on a Canadian oil rig as it was preparing to begin drilling. The Canadians had been granted a concession from the Guyanese government and were doing business when the gunboats moved in and evicted them. Caribbean community leaders intervened, and a peaceful resolution was reached, although troops still guard the border between the two tiny combatants.
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