This is a travel commercial for New Mexico focusing on the construction of “Spaceport America”, the first commercial spaceport.
I really have to wonder about this commercial. It’s an official commercial, but it really doesn’t feel that way. It feels… well… frankly, fake. Where’s the video footage? This is a video commercial, guys! You can give us more than just still photographs of the space port being built! Still photographs are kind of boring in this context and when paired with the extremely excited announcer, seem really odd. His enthusiasm would feel far less silly if there was moving footage of an actual spaceport being built going on behind him (this would also make his hard hat seem less pointless).
The thing is, a spaceport that you can actually visit and tour is a pretty cool tourist attraction. Since such things have typically been exclusively the property of governments and mostly housing secure or sensitive projects, they aren’t usually places you can really tour in any meaningful way. So a commercial spaceport that is not so tightly locked down at every turn and where consumers can actually see what’s going on in more areas is a pretty cool thing. Space and space travel are things we still find fascinating, so it’s absolutely worth using as a tourist draw if you can.
This commercial is just so very weak. It wouldn’t take that much effort to make a more dynamic and interesting video that could actually get people excited. I guess I just can’t understand why a video that’s actually boring and kind of makes the announcer look ridiculous was even released when they could have spent just a little more time and made a much better one that either didn’t have those problems or minimized them considerably. This isn’t a video that’s going to help with tourism much, but a good commercial about how exciting it is that there’s a spaceport that you can visit and eventually even use yourself definitely might!
