Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, will be the guest on David Livingston’s “The Space Show” this Thursday, August 24, at 7 pm PDT (10 pm EDT). This will be a rare opportunity for the general public to ask Bigelow questions about his company and its future plans.
While there has been no formal announcement from Space Adventures, Roskosmos officials said Tuesday that, as expected, Anousheh Ansari will replace Daisuke Enomoto on the Soyuz flight to the ISS next month. Ansari has been training in parallel with Enomoto as his backup, and when Enomoto was medically disqualified Monday, Ansari was the most likely replacement. The decision to replace Enomoto with Ansari will be “formalized” next week, according to a Roskosmos spokesman. Ansari would become the “first female space tourist”, although some might quibble that Helen Sharman might qualify as the first; at the very least, Ansari would be the first female space tourist to pay for her flight herself.
The Personal Spaceflight Federation originally formed last year after the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act as a means for companies to exchange information about industry best practices in the nascent personal spaceflight (aka space tourism) industry. However, the organization faded from public view now long thereafter. A few months ago PSF president Mike Kelly said at Space Access ‘06 conference that the organization was in the process of being relaunched, and that relaunch became official yesterday with a trio of press releases:
- One release covers future plans for the organization, including working on issues such as safety, liability protection, insurance, and public relations for the industry in general, as well as acting as an “interface” between the industry and the government;
- A second release announced a new set of officers for the organization, including Virgin Galactic’s Alex Tai as chairman, as well as a number of new member companies, including Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceDev, AirLaunch, and Spaceport America;
- A final press release congratulates two of its member companies, SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler, for winning COTS awards from NASA.
The PSF now has an official web site, although the information available there at the moment is limited to a brief summary of the organization, a list of members, and contact details. MSNBC has some more details about the re-launch of the Federation. Hopefully the PSF will be more active now than it was after the announcement of its formation last year.