A roundup of a few items going on in the field not associated with the Space Access conference:

• Charles Simonyi announced that he will speak with high school students in the US from the ISS during his trip to the station, using the amateur radio link on the ISS.
• The Scotsman reviews a new book about space tourism published in the UK, Destination Space: Making Science Fiction a Reality. The book, published by Virgin Books (wouldn’t you know), is due out in the US in a couple of months, according to Amazon.com.
• Two cosmonauts heading to the ISS on the next crew rotation said they would have no problems conducting an EVA with a tourist, provided the tourist had received some training.
• Space Adventures has hired a PR agency in order to support “additional promotional opportunities” associated with Simonyi’s flight next month. The firm, Susan Magrino Agency, plans to target “luxury and general-interest publications” and broadcast outlets. Don’t forget us online media…

During her presentation at the Space Access ‘07 conference this afternoon, Michelle Murray of FAA/AST mentioned that Blue Origin had a successful* test flight yesterday (March 22), their second under their experimental permit and the first since their initial flight in November. No other information about the flight is available, but I’ll update this as information comes out.

* “successful” here means successful in protecting public safety, the FAA’s primary concern for these tests. There has been no information released about the success of the flight itself.

Update: I fired off a quick query to Blue Origin’s media contact and got the following boilerplate reply: “Blue Origin’s policy is not to comment on or confirm whether any test flights are scheduled or conducted.”

At the Space Access ‘07 conference this morning, George French III of Rocketplane Inc. announced that the company has signed a letter of intent with Bigelow Aerospace regarding transportation to Bigelow’s orbital habitats. French provided only a few details about the agreement, which basically states that once Rocketplane’s K-1 is ready to carry passengers, and once Bigelow’s modules are in orbit, they’ll do business to ferry passengers to and from the facilities. Rocketplane officials didn’t want to disclose too many additional details since this announcement since this announcement is really a prelude to Robert Bigelow’s planned big announcement next month at the National Space Symposium about his overall business plan, but Rocketplane wanted to get a bit of the news out for the Space Access audience.

There was not much else new about the company in its conference presentation. One minor change is that they now refer to the former Rocketplane Ltd. part of the company, the one developing the XP spaceplane, as “Rocketplane Global”, while the K-1 development is the responsibility of Rocketplane Kistler (the former Kistler Aerospace); the overall company is simply Rocketplane Inc. The “Global” part in the name is designed to reflect the company’s long-term plans to set up XP operations outside the US, such as Japan, and eventually move into the point-to-point transportation market.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the state is close to a final lease agreement with Virgin Galactic for the spaceport, although state officials wouldn’t set a timetable for the completion of the agreement. That agreement was one of three conditions that officials in Doña Ana County set on the upcoming local tax referendum. Earlier this week state officials sought to reassure votes that the spaceport cost would not exceed $225 million, another condition on the deal. (The third is obtaining an FAA spaceport license, which is in progress.) The article also notes that the next launch from the spaceport by UP Aerospace, whose inaugural launch in September ended in failure, will now take place no earlier than April.

In the state capital, Santa Fe, legislators in the state House approved a number of bills, including one that that provides $25 million for spaceport roads. The Senate, which was temporarily boycotting the special session of the legislature in a tiff with the governor, is expected to reconvene by Saturday and take up the bills.

As Charles Simonyi prepares for his launch to the ISS early next month, SPACE.com reports that he will get a bit of a bonus: He will spend 13 days in space instead of the previously-planned 11, in order to ensure that the the landing of the Soyuz flight at the end of the taxi mission takes place in daylight in Kazakhstan. In case you were wondering, no, Simonyi won’t be charged extra for spending two additional days at ISS, according to a Space Adventures spokesperson.

At the Space Access ‘07 conference earlier this afternoon, Nicole Jordan and Will Pomerantz of X Prize discussed the 2006 X Prize Cup and plans for the 2007 event. The biggest news from their presentation is that, while an official final decision hasn’t been made, it is almost certain that the 2007 event will be held not at Las Cruces International Airport, home of the 2005 and 2006 events, but instead at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico, about an hour’s drive northeast of Las Cruces. The base holds an air show every other year, and the X Prize Cup would combine with the 2007 air show, most likely on the last weekend (27-28) of October.

A big focus of the presentation was on this year’s Lunar Lander Challenge event, which is expected to attract more contestants than 2006, when Armadillo Aerospace was the only team that had a vehicle ready to fly. I asked Will how many teams had registered, but he said he was unable to give a number at this time. The event will be able to handle up to five vehicles each for the Level 1 and Level 2 portions of the challenge. In general, he said, the five vehicles that are the first to get experimental permits from the FAA will be the ones allowed to fly, provided that they actually have a completed vehicle associated with that permit. If they get that many vehicles, he said, “Wow, it adds a lot of work, but wow, what a show.” Team registration is open now: the “regular registration” deadline is the end of next week, with a fee of $2,500; a “late registration” period is open through the end of April, but with a $5,000 entrance fee.

A lot has already been said about the Falcon 1 launch earlier this week, so rather than recap and reanalyze the launch from a technical standpoint, I’ll make this observation. It was initially a little surprising to hear that SpaceX people were celebrating, having champagne toasts, and, in general, calling the flight mostly a success. After all, their rocket had failed to reach orbit, the one factor that counts in a launch. In the most binary sense, this was a failed launch: being 90-95% successful is no consolation to the customer whose satellite failed to make orbit.

Of course, though, this wasn’t a satellite launch but rather a test flight, where that 90-95% success is actually meaningful, something I (and others) explained in a news@nature.com article published today. It’s still a little odd to hear people celebrating a success even as the second stage lost roll control, but in any case the launch is a significant step forward in SpaceX’s long-term efforts to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft capable of eventually carrying people into orbit.

I’ll be arriving in Phoenix later today to attend the Space Access ‘07 conference, the annual conference that attracts a large fraction of the entrepreneurial space industry, including a number of companies in or planning to enter the space tourism market. I will not be liveblogging the conference per se, but will post from time to time (as events, technology, and caffeine levels in my bloodstream permit) on conference events, and probably write one or more articles about it for future issues of The Space Review.

Space Adventures announced yesterday that space tourist Charles Simonyi will take a gourmet meal to the ISS next month to share with the crew. The six-course meal includes quail roasted in Madrian wine, duck breast ‘confit’ with capers, shredded chicken parmentier, apple fondant pieces, rice pudding with candied fruit, and semolina cake with dried apricots. The meal was prepared by Alain Ducasse, a French chef, in cooperation with the French space agency, and was selected by Martha Stewart, who is Simonyi’s “friend”, as the press release diplomatically puts it.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the New Mexico Spaceport Authority has endorsed a lower price tag for Spaceport America, the new commercial spaceport the state plans to build in southern New Mexico. The facility, previously estimated to cost $225 million, is now expected to cost “only” $198 million. The primary factor in the reduced cost is the removal of one of two runways originally planned for the spaceport. Not having a second runway doesn’t jeopardize the operations of the spaceport, and it can be added later if there’s sufficient demand. The announcement comes two weeks before voters in three counties go to the polls to vote on a tax referendum that would help pay for the spaceport. Releasing the new cost estimate for the spaceport now is intended to demonstrate “that we’re on track and that we have a cost estimate that meets the conditions that were set,” said Rick Homans, director of economic development for the state; one of the conditions set by Doña Ana County earlier this month requires the spaceport’s cost not to exceed $225 million. Early voting on the referendum has already started in the county, with about 1,500 people casting ballots in advance of the April 3 election.