A few minor items of note in the news the last few days:

• The Washington Post profiles Space Adventures and its role in shaping the space tourism industry. The article includes a quote from current ISS tourist Charles Simonyi, who contacted the reporter “in an e-mail from space”. Not a description you see in any ordinary Post article…
• Speaking of Simonyi, he calls the ISS both “cozy” and “complicated” in a video broadcast. He has made a number of amateur radio contacts, including one with a ham in Honolulu who got to speak with both Simonyi and NASA astronaut Sunita Williams.
• The Washington Times provides a breezy overview of the current state of the space tourism industry, from Simonyi to Virgin Galactic to future plans. The article claims that there is a “space tourism office at the United Nations”, but I have never heard of an office specifically devoted to space tourism there (there is the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, but that is not devoted to space tourism per se.)
• In this week’s issue of The Space Review, I review last week’s Bigelow announcement. Bigelow states, “We consider ourselves wholesalers of destinations that we build and we don’t consider ourselves as space hotel folks.” He does go on to say, however, that he would be willing to lease his facilities to companies that operate space hotels, including Virgin Galactic; Alex Tai of Virgin later said, “We can certainly look into that.”