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.