So the blogosphere is getting all worked up about an article run by Space News and authored by two former senior European Space Agency launcher officials that attacks sub-orbital tourism and hopes for commercial orbital transport

Hyperbola stresses the word former as it is clear that ESA's leadership does not share these views. The organisation has a policy on space tourism that could see ESA provide training, the agency has managed European Union studies about sub-orbital transport and the agency has even gone as far as helping prospective companies with their business plans and declaring that sub-orbit travel has a low (relatively speaking) carbon footprint. Former European astronauts like space tourism too

Videos from what used to be called the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight and is now the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight have been posted online care of Spaceport Sweden. Above is a video with Commercial Spaceflight Federation chairman and New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Steve Landeene and the other videos can be found here. The ISPCS took place this year from 21-22 October

Watch this video of the Internatonal Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, Sierra Nevada vice president Mark Sirangelo, the FAA's head of commercial space transportation George Nield and New Mexico space grant consortium director Pat Hynes spoke about private access to space

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

Inflatable domes, laser lights, a sunset and documentary film makers could all be features of Virgin Galactic's Monday 7 December roll-out of its SpaceShipTwo at Scaled Composites' Mojave air and spaceport hangars in California - above SS2 is filmed by Hyperbola on 28 July 2008 at Scaled's facility

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

Congressional support for NASA's return to the Moon Constellation programme can now be seen to have made a material impact on efforts to get commercial ventures underway, in this story on flightglobal.com

Back in April Hyperbola reported how the $150 million for commercial would likely be spent and in an answer to this journalist's question during a 7 May 2009 Space Operations Mission Directorate budget telecon SOMD head William Gestenmaire explained what accelerating out-year cargo flights meant for the human rating work for possible commercial crew

And with the announcement of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programme in the thrid quarter, along with the earlier publication of the $150 million figure, the future looked bright for private transportation

But looking back at open sources on what went on from May to September, while everyone was focused on the Review of US human space flight plans committee, it can be seen that commercial crew and cargo has had a rough time

In a surprise move that may see Lockheed frozen out of a Bigelow, Commercial Crew Development progamme collaboration the Boeing company has announced its teaming with Bigelow

 

Boeing Submits Proposal for NASA Commercial Crew Transport System

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 23, 2009 -- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] submitted a proposal to NASA on Sept. 22 to accelerate the development of commercial human space transportation as defined by NASA in its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) announcement. Boeing's submission, which draws on the company's experience with proven human-rated spacecraft, proposes development of technologies that will mature its Commercial Crew Transportation System concept.

NASA's CCDev initiative is intended to stimulate private-sector development of a commercially managed system that could be used to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station, Bigelow Aerospace's Orbital Space Complex, and other potential destinations in low Earth orbit.

On Friday 4 September I spoke to former NASA astronaut and Excalibur Almaz (EA) executive vice president for technical operations Leroy Chiao about the commercial orbital tourism venture that is using Soviet developed space vehicles. In the extended portion of this blog post are my notes from that telecon, facts that did not necessarily find their way into either this analysis article about the vehicles in development today or this article about Excalibur Almaz's plans and some comment

Well perhaps long awaited by the two guys at the centre of Project Enterprise who have probably wondered whatever happened to the April 2009 interview Hyperbola did with them at the Space Access Society conference in Phoenix, Arizona - you can hear the wildlife in the background. But here it is anyway, I knew I hadn't lost it...

Warning: This video was taken with a Flip video camera and while attempts to improve the audio through Windows Movie Maker have been made this blog takes no responsibility for the quality at your end

Scroll down the menu above to find Flightglobal's videos, all 13 of them, of Virgin Galactic activity at the Experimental Aircraft Association Airventure Oshkosh 2009 air show