It’s been a quiet couple of days since Anousheh Ansari’s launch, since she’s had limited communications opportunities while the Soyuz spacecraft she’s flying in is in transit to the ISS. There are a couple items of note:

• One communications opportunity she did have was a rare three-way hookup between the ISS, Soyuz, and the shuttle Atlantis. Despite the high-flying setup, the conversation was pretty banal, limited to some basic greetings and joking among the astronauts. The CBS News/Spaceflight Now account added that Ansari, along with astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, are suffering from a bit of space sickness but appeared to be in high spirits in the conversation.
• An AFP article notes the varying reactions in the Iranian media to Ansari’s flight. One newspaper criticized state-run TV for focusing too much attention on Ansari, claiming that it “has aroused people’s astonishment”. Another newspaper, though, called her flight “a source of pride for all Iranians.”
• With Ansari pretty much incommunicado at the moment, her blog is featuring a YouTube video of her launch and some comments by Peter Diamandis.

While I’m thinking of it, I’ll mention a couple of personal spaceflight-related articles published yesterday in The Space Review:

• Alex Howerton talks about the importance of simulation and training for future commercial passengers. Such training, he believes, can help people get used to the different physical sensations of such a flight, so they’re not taken by surprise on the actual flight itself.
• I expanded a full-fledged article about the use of the term. As I note, for the time being, for better or worse, we’re stuck with the term “space tourist” whether or not such people act like, or consider themselves to be, tourists.

Alan Boyle of MSNBC reports that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has awarded an experimental permit to Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ secretive suborbital launch venture. The one-year permit allows Blue Origin to begin powered test flights from its facility in West Texas, over 30 kilometers north of the town of Van Horn. As Boyle notes, there was little doubt that Blue Origin would get the permit, since there were virtually no environmental concerns and no local opposition. Blue Origin got the permit even though AST is still working through the rulemaking process for awarding such permits; the office was only granted the authority for such permits at the end of 2004 with the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.