I noted when the new X Prize Cup site went live last week that there was no mention of other activities associated with the cup, like a space tourism symposium held at New Mexico State Univ. a few days before last year’s event. Yesterday someone tipped me off to the fact that, yes, that conference, the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, will be held again in the days before the Cup. This year the conference will take place over two days, October 17-18, the Tuesday and Wednesday before the Cup; an optional tour of White Sands Missile Range is planned for Thursday, the day before the first day of the Cup itself. A barebones schedule is online, as well as registration information. Most interesting item on the site? The conference MC will be ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson.

A related item to the post earlier this week about Congressman Frank Lucas talking up the Oklahoma Spaceport in his district: in an article in the Alva Review-Courier Lucas trotted out some statistics regarding spaceflight at a town meeting. “From my research I’ve determined that 40 percent of citizens who encounter weightlessness for the first time have the most sensational motion sickness,” he said. While that may apply to orbital spaceflight, I suspect the number isn’t nearly so high for people who fly on zero-g aircraft, either government or commercial, and may also not be applicable to suborbital spaceflight, where the zero-g experience will last on the order of five minutes. Any thoughts?