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

More an exercise in mass media gullibility than engineering as far as Hyperbola can tell Galactic Suites has certainly garnered plenty of press coverage going by its fancy and nebulous website

On a scale of one to ten of "things that will never happen" this project has got to be an eleven. The value of this video above, posted on Tuesday on Youtube, is its apparent new spaceship sequence - this blog hasn't found any earlier videos

So enjoy the Galactic Suites fantasy space tourism and go here for more videos of the same

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

credit: IAF/KARI

So Hyperbola has finally touched down in Daejeon in south Korea, after a scorching reentry from the Oort cloud, or was that just the effect of the Korean spicy Kimchi pickle and the even more spicy red pepper paste, Kochu Chang, they put on most of their food?

Either way it is a countdown now to the start of the 60th International Astronautical Congress and the space agencies' plenary session, so expect pictures and pithy comment from this blog as the week unfolds with everything from grand human exploration visions to suborbital tourism

But it won't end with Hyperbola's Asiana flight out of Seoul next weekend, oh no, the international space theme continues with the AIAA/DLR International hypersonics and spaceplanes conference in Bremen, Germany next week

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...

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