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LAS CRUCES — DoñaAna County voters have set the stage for New Mexico to become a launchpad for space tourism.

Voters went to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to approve a quarter of 1 percent gross receipts tax to raise an estimated $49 million for the state-supported Spaceport America in the desert between Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences.

On Thursday night, unofficial results from the County Clerk's Office showed the tax leading by 265 votes out of more than 17,600 cast, and election supervisor Lynn Ellins said the 108 provisional ballots left to be counted today would not change the election's outcome.

"This positive vote for the spaceport ballot initiative means America's new frontier begins in southern New Mexico," Gov. Bill Richardson said in a release. "I'm proud that the people of Doña Ana County chose a high-tech and high-wage future, with better math and science education, and expanded opportunities for young men and women right here in New Mexico."

Supporters described the election as a make-or-break vote for the $198 million project, saying local support was crucial as a partial match for state funding.

The spaceport will cover 27 square miles of desert near White Sands Missile Range, where the United States launched its first rocket after World War II. Its anchor tenant would be British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Branson envisions starting suborbital rocket flights, at about $200,000 a person, in 2009. Eventually, the spaceport could offer trips into orbit and beyond.

Jonathan Firth, Virgin Galactic's project director, said the company plans to work closely with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority to create the spaceport over the next couple of years.

"It's going to be so exciting to have our customers come to Spaceport America, fly them into space and bring them back as astronauts," Firth said.

State Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans heralded this week's vote as a victory and said the final design and engineering for Spaceport America would move into high gear.

"New Mexico is really poised now to be the launchpad for this whole personal space flight industry," he said.

Homans added that Doña Ana County's decision to infuse the project with public money will likely have a ripple effect with investors, banks and other governments considering backing this new industry.

John Hummer, co-chairman of People for Aerospace, a Las Cruces group that actively promoted passage of the tax, said he was pleased with the outcome.

"We said all along that it was going to be a dead heat," Hummer said. "No one should underestimate the obstacles we had to overcome. Those obstacles were the word 'no', the word 'tax' and the word 'risk.' "

The state has pitched in millions of dollars toward the project, but also factored in $58 million from local option taxes in Doña Ana County and two less-populated adjacent counties - Otero and Sierra. Those two counties have not yet set tax referendums, but Homans plans to meet with county commissioners in the next 30 days.

Critics have argued the venture is too risky and the tax would be a better spent on existing county problems.

Doña Ana County Commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler isn't against the idea of a spaceport. But he said the tax shouldn't fall upon just a few counties, especially Do¤a Ana County, which he said is one of the state's poorest counties.

"We shouldn't be taxing the poor. This spaceport is a state project, it should be funded statewide," he said Thursday evening. ". . . We have a lot of poverty, we have a lot of needs in terms of sewers, roads and drainage and 45 percent of our children are without health care."

Vasquez Butler said supporters may have had a well-financed campaign and the star power of Richardson, but opponents put together a strong grass-roots effort.

"We gave them a run for their money," he said. "We put them on notice that we have a voting bloc."

Supporters of the spaceport envision huge economic benefits.

"The centerpiece of the whole project is the investment in math and science, education for our young people and the creation of new economic opportunities," Homans said.

"What we're doing is sending a message to the world that New Mexico embraces technology, innovation and new ideas and that we want to attract those kinds of companies and those kinds of entrepreneurs to our state."