I finally got around today and posted a selection of photos I took of the SpaceShipTwo event Thursday at Wired NextFest in New York on Flickr. There’s a mix of pictures of the cabin itself (including one of me trying out one of the seats) as well as the people there, including Richard Branson, Will Whitehorn, and a special guest appearance Thursday evening at a Virgin Galactic reception by New York Governor George Pataki.

The Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft carrying Anousheh Ansari and two astronauts landed safely late Thursday in Kazakhstan, and Ansari appeared to be in good condition as she emerged from the capsule after landing; her husband, Hamid, was on hand to greet her. I have not seen much about her near-term post-landing plans, although she is reportedly going to be in Washington DC on October 4 for an announcement about the $10-million Genomics X Prize the X Prize Foundation is developing. She will also be at the X Prize Cup later in October in New Mexico.

Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) announced today that is has signed an agreement with Andrews Space, with the latter company taking over the role in RpK’s COTS program that had previously planned to go to Orbital. As you may recall, Orbital announced on Monday that it was backing out of plans to take on the role of managing the development of RpK’s K-1 vehicle, as well as canceling a planned $10-million investment into RpK. Under Thursday’s agreement, Andrews will take on “supporting responsibility for systems engineering and integration and safety & mission assurance” for the K-1 project, and also make an unspecified strategic investment in RpK. Andrews was one of the six finalists in the COTS program but failed to win one of the two awards.

One picture from this morning’s event: Richard Branson gives two thumbs up sitting in one of the chairs in the SS2 cabin mockup. Note the “view” outside the porthole.

I’m sitting in the Javits Center in New York right now, having attended the Virgin Galactic press conference earlier this morning (right now over 10,000 students are here from around the city attending the education day of Wired NextFest, which runs through this weekend.) At the press conference Richard Branson and other Virgin Galactic officials unveiled a conceptual full-scale model of the cabin of SpaceShipTwo. Here’s a first cut of the notes from the press conference:

• SS2 will be about 60 feet (18.3 meters) long, twice the length of SpaceShipOne. While an animation of the flight shown at the press conference features a design of SS2, company officials stressed those are still notional at best, since Scaled Composites is keeping the actual SS2 design under tight wraps until they’re ready to show it off, in about a year.
• The cabin features three rows of two seats each, plus seats at the front for the two pilots. The seats are in an upright position for launch, but retract after the powered portion of the flight to allow more room in the cabin during zero-g, and also to put them in the proper position for reentry.
• Virgin is no longer planning to tether their passengers to their seats during the zero-g phase of the flight. Instead, the flight profile is such that there should be plenty of time (around 40 seconds) from the end of zero-g to the onset of high-g deceleration during reentry to allow people to get back to their seats. And even if they can’t, officials said passengers could simply lie on the floor and be able to safely withstand the peak g forces.
• The animation showed passengers wearing pressure suits and helmets throughout the flight, but Will Whitehorn said they have not yet made a decision about whether passengers will wear them. they are looking at several pressure suit designs that would apparently be less cumbersome than traditional suits but protect passengers in the event of cabin decompression.
• Virgin estimates that about 80-85% of people who are interested in flying will be healthy enough to do so; they are starting to work through the health issues for the Founders.
• There was a big emphasis on how environmentally friendly the system would be (part of a broader initiative by the Virgin Group); they noted that the CO2 emissions from a SS2 flight would be the equivalent of those associated with a single business-class passenger going from New York to London on Virgin Atlantic.
• Branson and Whitehorn also emphasized that they see SS2 as a stepping stone to an orbital vehicle, SpaceShipThree, that would be able to carry passengers but also satellites and scientific payloads at a fraction of the cost of existing vehicles.
• SS2 will be powered by a hybrid motor, but of a somewhat different design than that used by SS1; the company declined to offer details.
• Current plans call for SS2 and White Knight 2 carrier aircraft to be unveiled in late 2007, with flight tests to begin at the end of 2007 or early 2008.
• There’s a new version of the Virgin Galactic web site (very Flash-heavy) now available with some of the new details.

I will have some more details later today or tonight, along with some photos I took of the event, as well as, most likely, a summary article in Monday’s edition of The Space Review.

The Wall Street Journal reported in this morning’s issue that Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, is creating a new space tourism-oriented startup, Benson Space Company (BSC). (The Journal requires a subscription, but you may be able to read the article for free here). Benson is stepping down as chairman and CTO of SpaceDev to start the new venture, which will purchase Dream Chaser spacecraft from SpaceDev and operate them for suborbital and, later, orbital space tourism. Benson told the Journal that he has already raised an initial round of $1 million with “less than a dozen phone calls”; he eventually plans to raise on the order of $50 million to build and test Dream Chaser. (See also Alan Boyle’s coverage of the development at MSNBC’s Cosmic Log.)

A press release announcing the formation of BSC just hit the wires early this morning, and the company’s web site is also up, including a form to reserve a seat on a Dream Chaser flight. Ticket prices will be between $200,000 and $300,000, which would put BSC in the high range of planned suborbital space tourism operators.

Around this time tomorrow Anousheh Ansari will no longer be on the station, having joined Pavel Vinogradov and Jeffrey Williams on the Soyuz spacecraft that will take them back to Earth; landing is scheduled in Kazakhstan at approximately 9:10 pm EDT Thursday. In the meantime, Ansari speaks about the joys of weightlessness and the benefits of Velcro when those joys aren’t so apparent. Her official web site now has several videos she recorded on the ISS, including one thanking all the people who visited and left comments on her blog. (Note that in the videos she is wearing overalls whose design incorporates both the US and Iranian flags. Hopefully no one at the State Department is going apoplectic at the moment…)

That’s the suggestion of Jack Kennedy, a Virginia attorney, in an op-ed in the Roanoke Times this week. Looking at the boom in commercial spaceports in the US and elsewhere, he believes that the state is missing an opportunity to get involved by using an existing spaceport, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), co-located with the Wallops Flight Facility. “Unlike nearly all the commercial tourist spaceports being touted,” he notes, “it has the launch runways, tracking and telemetry facilities needed to be a part of the human suborbital space tourist business.” His recommendation: “Virginia government executives and legislators need to focus on incentives to attract Virginia’s own Space Adventures to base its East Coast human suborbital launches near Chincoteague… Double-time effort to correct the benign neglect of Virginia’s spaceport should be made.”

If you’re going to be in New York this weekend, or in easy traveling distance, you may want to check out the Wired NextFest at the Javits Center, which will feature, among others exhibitors, Virgin Galactic. While some reports indicate that Virgin Galactic will be displaying a full-scale mockup of SpaceShipTwo, the company itself indicated in a media announcement that it will be unveiling a “full-sized mock-up showing the conceptual interior of SpaceShipTwo within the concept of scaled-up version of SpaceShipOne.” Rather convoluted language, but suggesting that what’s really being unveiled is the current design of the cabin interior, not the full vehicle itself. (One imagines that the overall design of SS2 itself will be kept under tight wraps until Burt Rutan is good and ready to show it off.)

In addition to the cabin mockup (which will be unveiled at a Thursday morning press conference featuring Richard Branson, Will Whitehorn, and other Virgin Galactic officials), there are a couple of related panel sessions during NextFest itself. At noon on Friday Virgin officials (sans Branson), along with Brian Binnie, will speak on “Virgin Galactic, Cleared for Take-off”. Saturday at 10 am “The New Vacationauts” panel includes Eric Anderson, Peter Diamandis, Whitehorn, Granger Whitelaw of the Rocket Racing League, and Chris Shank of NASA.

• Anousheh Ansari continues her blogging (or pseudo-blogging or whatever you want to call it), discussing life on the station and watching the Earth from the station. The best part,” however, she notes, “and by far my favorite view up here is the view of the universe at night. The stars up here are unbelievable… It looks like someone has spread diamond dust over a black velvet blanket.”
• In addition to her blog, Ansari also has a Flickr account, including a few photos taken from the ISS. So whether or not she’s the first female space tourist, she’s obviously the first Web 2.0 visitor to the ISS…
• A noted critic of claims that Ansari is blogging in space has something of a change of heart. “Despite where you may fall on the claim as to whether she is ‘blogging’ or not, I do feel that she has broken totally new territory - in an expansive, profound, global fashion.”
• CBS News’ Bill Harwood writes about Ansari’s blog and her stay on the ISS. Later in the article NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria notes that while he’s changed his mind and is supportive of space tourism, he’s still undecided on other commercial uses of ISS, including the planned golf shot that his Russian crewmate will perform during a November spacewalk. “I think the sort of commercialization of time, of use of time of astronauts and cosmonauts, is a little bit of another step for me. I’m not quite there yet.”
• There’s been a lot of reaction in the blogosphere to Ansari’s flight, but this post offers a unique opinion about Ansari: “She has advanced the cause of freedom as much as a squadron of B-52’s.” Umm, okay.