It looks like this week is spaceport week for the personal spaceflight industry. A front-page article in the Bahrain Tribune on Thursday claimed that Virgin Galactic was planning to establish a spaceport in Bahrain for suborbital space tourism. (The article is no longer available on the newspaper’s web site, and its JavaScript-based system makes permalinks effectively impossible.) The article claimed that Virgin based the decision on the Persian Gulf nation’s “infrastructure and ideal geo-political positioning.” The decision, officially under wraps according to unnamed sources cited in the article, could be revealed as soon as February.

Virgin Galactic quickly moved to squash the rumors, telling Bloomberg News, TradeArabia, and another Bahrain newspaper, the Gulf Daily News, that the company had no plans to establish a spaceport in Bahrain, or anywhere else in the Persian Gulf. “We have looked at Sweden and the possibility of opening one in Scotland,” Virgin Galactic spokeswoman Jackie McQuillan told the Gulf Daily News, “But as for opening one in Bahrain, or even in Dubai, that is not true at all.”

The Daily News article leans on its own unnamed sources to say that even if Branson elected to establish a spaceport at some point in the region, it most likely would be in Dubai or elsewhere in the UAE, citing Branson’s visit to Dubai earlier this year, where the subject of a spaceport came up. Ras Al Khaimah, another emirate within the UAE, already has plans to develop a spaceport in cooperation with Space Adventures.

While the Tribune article might be short on facts (among other things, it calls Rocketplane Kistler’s George French a “billionaire” and Canadian Arrow’s Geoff Sheerin a “tycoon”), it does make a point that a spaceport in Bahrain, or elsewhere in the region, would be “more viable and easier to access for this part of the world.” Not everyone will want to travel to New Mexico or California or Oklahoma just to fly into space, and many people will want to see their own region of the world from space, rather than the potentially unfamiliar geography of the American Southwest. There may not be any plans in the works now for a Virgin Galactic spaceport in Bahrain or the Persian Gulf region, but if the company is successful it may only be a matter of time before one is developed.

The three counties that are proposing gross receipts taxes to help raise money for the construction of Spaceport America are considering a joint hearing to discuss the proposed tax, the Alamogordo Daily News reported Thursday. The purpose of the joint hearing of the county commissions, according to Doña Ana Commissioner Bill McCamley, is to demonstrate regional support for the project, making it more likely voters will approve the taxes. Doña Ana County, home to Las Cruces, is planning an April 2007 referendum on the tax; Otero and Sierra Counties have yet to schedule similar votes.

The Adelaide, Australia newspaper The Advertiser reports that Rocketplane Kistler has delayed plans to start work on spaceport facilities in Woomera. “Design changes” are blamed for the delay, although it’s not clear from the brief article whether the changes are in the design of the spaceport or in the K-1 vehicle that will fly from there. Work at Woomera was supposed to begin in May. “Things are a little behind but they are still on track,” said Alan Evans, chairman of Rocketplane Kistler Australia. (How can you be a “a little behind” but still be “on track”?)

[A nod to Mark Evans, who flagged the article in a comment to a post last month about Woomera.]

According to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the Columbus Dispatch, the state of Ohio has made a preliminary incentive offer to PlanetSpace to lure the venture to establish operations in the state. (See previous coverage of Ohio’s plans to get PlanetSpace to establish a landing site and/or manufacturing facility near Columbus.) Details about the offer weren’t disclosed, but the article said the state was proposing a “multimilliondollar package of tax credits, grants and other incentives”, some of which would require matching contributions from the city of Columbus and Franklin County, where Columbus and Rickenbacker International Airport, the proposed landing site for PlanetSpace’s Silver Dart vehicle, are located. Chirinjeev Kathuria, chairman of PlanetSpace, said he hoped to have a deal in place in 60 days to keep the company on a schedule that would have a vehicle ready to fly by late 2008 (which seems like a very aggressive schedule, given the company’s current standing.) Kathuria also hinted that “one other state is interested in talking to us”.

Today’s Toronto Star has an article about Terry Wong, a member of the astronaut corps of Canadian Arrow/PlanetSpace first announced back in 2003. Wong, a Canadian Forces pilot, used to suffer something that would seem to be a disadvantage to a pilot or astronaut: airsickness (including an incident on his first solo airplane flight that required a bit of maneuvering.) He doesn’t suffer from airsickness now, but seasickness is another story: “I’m no good in a boat if the water’s rough.”

There are a few interesting items in the article beyond Capt. Wong’s motion sickness woes. The seasickness is an issue because the Canadian Arrow spacecraft will splash down in the Atlantic after launching from the Cape Breton spaceport in Nova Scotia, starting around 2010, according to the article. However, when the Cape Breton project was announced in August, it was intended only for orbital flights of its Silver Dart orbital spacecraft, not the suborbital Canadian Arrow capsule, which would operate from a “Midwestern” state. Earlier this month, when Ohio was revealed as that Midwestern state, the focus was on suborbital flights of the Silver Dart, a winged vehicle that could land on a runway, rather than the Canadian Arrow capsule that requires a water landing. (To make things more confusing, the spacecraft described later in the article does sound like the Silver Dart.) Has there really been a change in plans, or is the company (inadvertently) sending out mixed messages?

Wong also tells the Star that NASA is taking Canadian Arrow and PlanetSpace “seriously”, including offering unspecified technical expertise. “They know we can do this,” Wong said. Does that mean PlanetSpace has a Space Act agreement with NASA (something hinted at in the original report about the Cape Breton spaceport), or something more informal? Wong adds that Canadian Arrow has “partnership deals” with undisclosed aerospace companies in the US and Canada.

However, the best line of the article is not about space, but about Wong’s preference for flying helicopters rather than jets. “It’s nice to take off in snow in Moose Jaw and a couple of hours later be warm in Vancouver. But I like helicopters, too. It’s great to be able to land, pee and fly on.” The ultimate in quick turnaround time.

The AP reports that Xavier Gabriel, owner of a popular lottery office in Spain, wants to be the first Spanish space tourist and has signed up for a flight on Virgin Galactic. As part of a charity he sponsors, he has collected wishes from people across the country; he plans to make the “most interesting one” come true, while carrying the rest in a digital recording on his spaceflight. “We’re land-bound, and can’t appreciate how beautiful the Earth is,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to seeing it from space, and thinking about how the planet is too beautiful to be treated so badly.” He added that he hopes his flight takes place on December 22nd, the date of the annual world-famous “El Gordo” lottery in Spain.

Anousheh Ansari came in at number 9 in the Dallas Morning News’s list of top ten Texans of the year. Ansari cracked the list because of her Soyuz flight this fall, and for what she did during and after the flight: “…what makes Mrs. Ansari’s journey all the more amazing is how generously she shared even personal moments like that one with people from around the world.”

Metro, the free British daily, had a brief interview with former astronaut Charles Bolden last week. Among the questions asked of Bolden was whether he was “for or against” space tourism. His response:

I’m a big fan. Every time we can send a human into Earth’s orbit, that’s one more person that becomes aware of the value and joy of doing that, and knows what that vantage point affords us. The more of it the better.

He did caution, however, that potential tourists need significant amounts of training before they fly:

We need to be careful we don’t let people go about it in a cavalier manner. We need to put as much training into the space tourists as any government-sponsored space exploration.

“As much training” as government missions could be a significant obstacle down the road for tourism, given that those flying on Soyuz flights have to spend six months in Russia. The size of the market for those who want to fly into orbit and have up to $20 million available is small enough as it is; it gets smaller when you tack on the six months’ worth of training.

Tonight’s episode of the CBS TV series “NUMB3RS” will feature a guest appearance by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, playing himself (of course), according to a press release issued by Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, a personal spaceflight advocacy organization. That release, as well as companion release, indicates that Aldrin’s appearance is timed with the relaunch of the ShareSpace web site, although as of this writing the ShareSpace site is just a placeholder with the message “our full site is coming soon!” The new ShareSpace site, according to that placeholder, will be “a clearinghouse of resources that will help people of all ages to enjoy, prepare for and literally fly into space.”

I got a call over the lunch hour from someone who said that CNBC, the financial news cable network, was providing some coverage today about space tourism. It wasn’t clear whether it was an isolated segment or a recurring feature today; apparently one segment was about Benson Space Company (which would make sense given the news yesterday that it was hiring former astronaut Hoot Gibson). I don’t have access to CNBC during the day, and I couldn’t find anything on the subject on the network’s web site, so take this with a grain of salt…