Australian newspapers reported over the weekend that Brisbane woman Glenys Ambe is the first person to book a flight on Virgin Galactic. First person? That’s going to be a bit of a surprise to the 100 or so Founders, plus anyone else who reached a deal with Virgin prior to Ms. Ambe; perhaps she’s the first person to book a flight through an accredited travel agent in Australia.

If you think you have a clue regarding when Virgin Galactic will begin commercial service, and you’re not averse to or prohibited from gambling, you might be able to make a buck or two. Web site BetUS is taking bets on when Virgin Galactic’s first commercial spaceflight will take place. The leading time frame is May-August 2009, with odds of +275 ($275 won for $100 gambled), followed by September-December 2009 at +300 and January-April 2009 at +400. If you’re a pessimist, January-April and May-August 2011 are each at +1200. The full list of odds is on its web site, under “Future/props” and “Entertainment props”, alongside such key issues as Alec Baldwin, Britney Spears, and Survivor Fiji.

It should be noted that, at the National Space Symposium last month, Alex Tai of Virgin Galactic said that the company was “well on course” for beginning commercial flights sometime in 2009 or 2010, a bit later than previously reported, although Virgin officials have made it clear that they’ll fly when the vehicle is ready, rather than try to stick with a specific timetable.

Disclaimer: no, this post is not endorsing gambling, and such activities may be prohibited by law in your jurisdiction.

As expected, the X Prize Foundation announced last week that the 2007 X Prize Cup will move to Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, NM, where it will merge with the air show held at the base on October 27-28. With free admission this year (because the event is being held on an Air Force base), they are expecting as many as 100,000 people to attend, up from the approximately 15,000 people who were at the 2006 event. That sounds like a huge increase, but one person who attended the 2005 air show at Holloman estimated an attendance of 75,000, so 100,000 is not as big a reach as one might think.

The key issue not addressed in the press release is what sort of “flavor” the event will have: will it be a space-oriented show, with some airshow-like events added on, as was the case with the 2005 and 2006 events (which had F-117 flybys and the like), or will they simply graft on the Lunar Lander Challenge and some static displays to an Air Force air show? We’ll have to see how this event comes together in the next several months.

Cue the “Wide World of Sports” theme music, but watch out for that ski jump:

• The Virginian-Pilot investigates whether the Mid-Altantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) might host space tourism flights in the future. One of the problems with MARS outlined in the article is a lack of investment by Virginia and Maryland: its operating budget is only a half-million dollars a year, hardly enough for marketing, if there was much there to market at the present time. (Disclosure: I was one of the people interviewed for, and quoted in, the article.)
• An article in Arabian Business about the first UAE citizen to sign up for Virgin Galactic notes that Virgin may be looking at possible sites in the region for a spaceport “should demand for tickets from the region increase.” Given, if nothing else, the large volumes of disposable income in that region, one can only imagine that that time will come sooner rather than later.
• A Malaysian airport could become a spaceport under a proposal developed by a group led by space tourism marketing pioneer Patrick Collins. However, the article states that the proposal “was submitted in 1999″ (which suggests that not much progress has taken place in the last eight years), and that it relies on the Ascender vehicle proposed by Bristol Spaceplanes, a British company that has made no visible progress on its concept for some time (and whose web site has not been updated for nearly a year and a half).