A brief piece by Lunar Enterprise Daily asks this question: “What Does Leading Suborbital Spaceflight Company Want to Be Called Now?” Before wondering if Virgin Galactic is planning a name change, the article is actually referring to Rocketplane Ltd.—or is it Rocketplane Kistler? Since the announcement earlier this year that Rocketplane and Kistler Aerospace would “join forces”, there has been a little confusion among observers about what to call the company. The rocketplane.com web site calls itself simply “Rocketplane”, although the kistleraerospace.com web site now calls itself “Rocketplane Kistler”. Confusing, no?

At Space Access ’06 last week, Chuck Lauer started his presentation by saying that the company’s name “is now Rocketplane Kistler”. “We did have a major change in our corporate structure and focus. This happened over the last few months.” It remains to be seen if the mixed messages in the web sites and other corporate communications is simply the natural lag in re-branding that comes after a merger, or if Rocketplane and Kistler will be retained as separate brands or operating units over the longer term.

The Sunday Times of London offered a brief overview of Bigelow Aerospace and its plans for developing inflatable habitats that could be used for orbital space hotels. There are few, if any, new details about Bigelow’s effort in the article, although it will be gratifying to many that the Times played the story straight, without any snickering or snarky remarks.

A somewhat less viable scheme was profiled last week in the Long Island (NY) Press. Like their colleagues in the UK, the Press plays it straight in a discussion of Space Island Group, a long-running effort by Gene Myers to build orbital habitats using space shuttle external tanks. This is a case, though, where a little skepticism and hard reporting would have benefited the reader: the Press described Myers as “among the handful of pioneers with major financial backing who say that it won’t be long before vacationers are packing their bags for space.” However, there’s no evidence that Myers has “major financial backing”, or that his work is that much farther along than when I read his self-published book on the topic as a Caltech student over 15 years ago. At least the Press is in good company: Business 2.0 also played it straight with Space Island Group earlier this year, claiming that the company will start launching modules “as early as 2008″ – apparently without digging to see if there’s any there there.

A press release a few days ago by ZG Aerospace (not to be confused with Zero Gravity Corporation, operators of commercial weightless airplane flights) proclaimed “Three Months to First-Ever Consumer Space Tourism Launch”. Huh? Read on:

ZG Aerospace (formerly ZeroG Aerospace) today announced that payload space is still available for consumers to send small personal items to space this July, when the first-ever commercial rocket is launched at the new Southwest Regional Spaceport in New Mexico. Through the ZG Aerospace website at www.zgspace.com, consumers can finally participate in space exploration on the ZGS-1 unprecedented payload for as little as $49.95.

This is a reference to the upcoming commercial sounding rocket launch by UP Aerospace, which will have enough payload space for carrying small items, like business cards and photos. While that may well be a viable market niche, it’s hard to call something like that “space tourism”.