SPACE: Now we need a plan for Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic’s Halloween catastrophe in the Mojave Desert laid bare the vulnerability of Spaceport America’s reliance on a single anchor tenant for success.

The Oct. 31 crash of Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo rocket means the launch of space tourism flights from southern New Mexico won’t happen until at least 2016, even with the company’s determination to restart flight tests with a newly built vehicle in six months.

And the longer it takes for Virgin to launch commercial operations, the more pressure builds on the New Mexico Spaceport Authority to recruit more operators to generate the revenue needed to keep the Spaceport open and assure its long-term economic viability.

That’s the risk of having a single point of failure.