Famed physicist Stephen Hawking dropped a big hint yesterday that he would like to take a suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic: as the BBC reported, Hawking said that, “My next goal is to go into space; maybe Richard Branson will help me.” MSNBC’s Alan Boyle follows up on this statement and finds that, yes, Virgin Galactic would be happy to help Hawking realize his goal, and that Hawking might be able to experience weightnessless on a Zero Gravity Corp. aircraft flight as soon as next year. (Be sure to skim through the dozens of comments to Boyle’s Cosmic Log post: while most people are very supportive of Hawking’s desire to fly in space, there are a few that criticized the “morons” who “want to spend billions into a fairy tale journey into outer space.”)

An interesting note: this is not the first time that Hawking has been linked to Virgin Galactic. In a number of previous reports, like this Business Week article back in August, Hawking was listed among celebrities who were either interested in such a flight or who had already signed up. However, since those lists included people like William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver who have since stated that they have no interest in flying in space, it’s been tough to take those lists seriously.

Earlier this week I noticed a press release from Universal Space Systems (USS) announcing their “2006 Pre-release Holiday Sale” for their upcoming report, the “Space Adventurer Assessment/Report”. This document, which the release humbly describes as “the ultimate reference guide whether you will be taking a trip into space in the next few years or many years from now”, is on sale through Christmas Eve for the low, low price of $2,000, one-third of its list price.

The idea of selling research reports for hefty prices is commonplace in a wide range of industries: when we originally released the Space Tourism Market Study at Futron four years ago, we charged $1,500 for the suborbital-only version and $2,500 for the suborbital and orbital version. (Two years ago we made the report free to all.) Another company, Research Reports International, issued a report earlier this year on the space tourism industry for “just” $199, although as noted here there’s not much original work in that report. USS does provide a table of contents and sample pages from the report; it’s tough to judge the report from that alone, but what’s provided suggests a comprehensive report, although at a basic level of detail and primarily regurgitating existing information.

A bigger concern for prospective customers is the lack of information about the company itself. The company’s web site does have a toll-free number and email addresses, but no mailing address. (The press release is datelined “Upham, NM”, but that seems unlikely since no one lives in Upham, the future site of Spaceport America.) The company’s domain name, universalspacesystems.com, has its registration information, including address, assigned to contactprivacy.com, a Toronto company that provides a Whois privacy service. The web site also doesn’t provide any information about who works for the company, to gauge their expertise and credentials. That doesn’t mean the company’s up to no good, of course, but does suggest you might want to do a little research on your own before paying $2,000 or more for their report.

(I’ve contacted the company y email, asking for some more information about themselves and their report; I’ll pass along any response.)