X Prize founder Peter Diamandis will be in Capitol Hill today, but he won’t be there primarily to talk about commercial spaceflight or space tourism. Instead, he will be one of the witnesses of a House Science Committee hearing this morning on “H-Prize Act of 2006″ (HR 5143), legislation recently introduced by Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) to establish a series of prizes to encourage development of “transformational technologies that can lead to commercialization of hydrogen.” Diamandis’ X Prize Foundation is now moving beyond its origins as a space prize, with plans to run prizes in various other disciplines, including alternative energies.

An article in the Saipan Tribune reports that the FAA is considering a “proposed space tourism” project that would be based from the Pacific island’s airport. Is Saipan set to become the next commercial spaceport? Not exactly. According to this article as well as an earlier report by the same newspaper, a Japanese company called “Space Japan”, modeled after Space Adventures in the US, wants to conduct high-altitude MiG flights from the island, like the flights Space Adventures offers in Russia. That would explain why the article mentions that the FAA’s flight standards office, and not the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, is reviewing the proposal. (Saipan is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth.)