The Register, a British publication that normally specializes in IT news, offers an interesting account of a talk at NASA Ames this week by SpaceDev founder Jim Benson:

SpaceDev founder James Benson had plowed through the majority of his presentation on space tourism opportunities when the cackling broke out. “Will you sit down. I can’t see the screen,” barked one woman. “Well, I can’t hear the lecture. We came hear to listen to Mr. Benson not to hear you gossip,” replied an older Asian lady not much more than 5 feet tall. The squabble escalated from there with both sides agreeing that they despised each other’s lack of social graces.

Reporter Ashlee Vance sees this as a good sign for SpaceDev and suborbital space tourism in general: “We hope that companies such as SpaceDev can deliver on what they promise because they’re getting little old ladies awfully excited about the prospect of zooming off to the Moon in the near future.” Vance notes that Benson believes that the cost of a suborbital ticket will go down to $15,000 to $50,000 in the next seven to 10 years.

Bryan Singer is best known these days as the director of the newly-released blockbuster Superman Returns. But he also has a secret identity that he revealed to a Malaysian newspaper: he is a Founder:

Given all the money in the world, what kind of film would you’d like to do?

I would like to shoot a film in space. I’d like to shoot Star Wars on location [laughs]. Honestly, it’s doesn’t matter what environment or genre, because I’m very driven by story and character. But like I said earlier, to be able to shoot in space would be really exciting.

Speaking of that, I’m going to space in 2008. Richard Branson is building this Virgin Galactic Space craft, and I’m one of the 100 founders. We are the first to go up; the guinea pigs!

One wonders if he got any discount by giving Branson a cameo in the movie (although I have yet to see the film to see exactly how that turned out).