In a post yesterday, I noted that Virgin Galactic is planning to attend a number of upcoming conferences. In addition to those events, there are a couple of other conferences coming up that will discuss, in part, space tourism:
- The Space Access Society will be hosting Space Access ‘06 in Phoenix April 20-22. This conference is one of the key annual meetings of entrepreneurial space companies. While the scope of this conference is much greater than just space tourism, a number of companies and individuals associated with the market will be there, including Space Adventures, Rocketplane, New Mexico Spaceport, XCOR Aerospace, and Reda Anderson, one of the first customers of Rocketplane. The conference has one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios of any conference: no exhibit halls, no fancy dinners, just a single track of presentations from morning all the way late into the evening. Highly recommended.
- In the last few years the Space Frontier Foundation has held two conferences: a “Return to the Moon” conference in Las Vegas in July and a “Space Frontier Conference” in Los Angeles in October. This year, though, the Foundation has announced that they’re merging the conferences into a single event, “NewSpace 2006″, in Las Vegas July 19-23. The conference will feature sessions on lunar exploration as well as other commercial space topics. Space tourism will get some time on Saturday, July 22, along with “Sex in Space”, which the press release coyly notes are “subjects that are sure to draw crowds and heat things up.” The conference web site is now open.