For months attention (and a little bit of ridicule) has focused on plans in the Wisconsin State Legislature to create a state aerospace authority charged primary with developing a state spaceport for commercial spacecraft, such as in the lakeshore town of Sheboygan. The bill has passed both houses of the state legislature and is expected to be signed into law by the governor in the next few weeks. So full speed ahead for Spaceport Sheboygan? Well, it depends on what you mean by “spaceport”, according to an article in Sunday’s Sheboygan Press. City officials, such as Gary Dulmes of the Sheboygan Development Corp., are focused on creating an educational center:

The planned science and education center is commonly referred to as Spaceport Sheboygan, but that term technically refers to an area of restricted airspace over Lake Michigan from Port Washington to Manitowoc, according to the SDC business plan. The City of Sheboygan has state permission to build a future public-use spaceport within that area.

But Sheboygan will not be Cape Canaveral, North Campus any time in the near future.

“Is there going to be commercial space travel? Yes. Will it be here? Who knows – but that was not the purpose of the aerospace authority bill,” Dulmes said. “There’s other firms that are out there trying to do it, seeing it as a huge moneymaker, but it certainly isn’t on our radar.”

State Sen. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan, who proposed the WAA bill, said the nine-member WAA would oversea potential future use as a launch site, but Dulmes said nothing larger than the 10- to 12-foot rockets used annually by Rockets for Schools is in the SDC business plan.

A companion article in the Press points out that it is possible for a suborbital spaceport to develop in Sheboygan, or elsewhere in Wisconsin, but it won’t happen soon. Both Leibham and George French, president of Rocketplane (and the founder of Sheboygan’s Rockets for Schools program a decade ago), said that the authority is a necessary first step. But as Sheboygan mayor Juan Perez put it, launching rockets from a Sheboygan spaceport “sounds a little bit far-fetched.”

There are several companies competing in the suborbital tourism market: Virgin Galactic, Rocketplane, Space Adventures, among others. By in large the companies have said little about each other in public, other than a few glittering generalities or, at worst, some very general dismissals of unnamed rivals. In the cover story of the latest issue of Arabian Business, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Will Whitehorn has some less-than-kind things to say about Space Adventures, however:

Branson is dismissive, telling Arabian Business: “A lot of companies around the world are now offering space travel, but no-one else has made the same progress as us. People have to be careful about paying deposits. I don’t want to name any companies, but we have looked at all the different kinds of technology. We looked at Russian technology and we dismissed it. We looked at a lot of US technology, and we dismissed it.”

His Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn is even more disparaging of the claims coming out of Ras Al-Khaimah and Space Adventures, adding: “They haven’t actually built a system that works. It has never flown. It is a plywood mock-up in the middle of Russia. I favour competition but only when it exists. You shouldn’t sell people dreams that don’t work.”

The Ras Al-Khaimah reference above is to plans announced by Space Adventures in February to set up a spaceport in the emirate, part of the UAE. That spaceport will be at the Ras Al-Khaimah International Airport, but the Arabian Business notes that several companies—the three mentioned above plus the Canadian-US venture PlanetSpace—have been checking out an unused airstrip in the emirate for possible conversion into a spaceport. As the article notes, “local residents have for several months noticed the fleets of limousines that regularly pull up, circle the area for half an hour, then disappear.” Officials from these four companies have apparently all been passengers in those limos.

Space Adventures isn’t lying low, though. Richard Branson was in Dubai last week, primarily to publicize the beginning of Virgin Atlantic flights to the UAE, but also to discuss potential Virgin Galactic flights from RAK. During that trip Space Adventures announced that it would fly the first UAE national, Adnan Al Maimani, on one of its flights from the RAK airport. “I am honored to represent the UAE as the first national to fly to space, but even more thrilling is that I’ll launch from Ras Al-Khaimah,” he said in a Space Adventures press release. “If I could fly today, I would!”

An article in The Sunday Telegraph about Virgin Galactic and space tourism scores something of a coup: a quote from former NASA administrator Dan Goldin, who rarely talks to the press. Under Goldin’s leadership, as many readers may recall, NASA was staunchly opposed to the flight of Dennis Tito, the first space tourist to visit the ISS. It appears that Goldin’s opinion towards space tourism hasn’t softened in the intervening years:

“Space Shuttle crews work on the presumption that there is a 1-in-250 probability of them not making it back,” says Dan Goldin, a retired Nasa administrator. “That compares with 1-in-2,000,000 for commercial airline operations. This is serious stuff and should be reserved for highly trained professionals. It isn’t Disneyland.”

Goldin’s statement, though, is based on the assumption that suborbital space tourism vehicles will be no more reliable than the shuttle, something that vehicle developers, most notably Burt Rutan, would not agree with: Rutan has publicly stated that his vehicles will be far safer than existing spacecraft, and comparable early airliners from the late 1920s and 1930s.

A couple of people who signed up for Virgin Galactic flights, though, don’t seem deterred by the risks. “It’s an addiction, pal” said Bill Cullen. “I’ve got to go. My wife’s not happy. Partly because there’s no life insurance for this trip. Forget it. We’re on our own.” Richard Burr: “It’s a boy thing. When you’re a kid you want to be either a rock star or an astronaut. This is my big chance.” Presumably not to be a rock star.