One of the big topics that will likely come up during the ISPS and X Prize Cup will be the future of Rocketplane Inc. given its loss of its funded COTS award earlier this month. (Rocketplane president George French and VP of business development Chuck Lauer are both scheduled to be on the first panel of the day Wednesday at the ISPS). An article that appeared this past weekend in The Oklahoman suggested that the company would turn its attention back to suborbital space tourism, which had received far less attention over the last 18 months or so as the company focused on the K-1 orbital vehicle. Rocketplane Global, the subsidiary focused on suborbital flight, will unveil a new design of the XP suborbital vehicle this week; the reports haven’t indicated if this is a design tweak or a substantial redesign, or the reasons behind the change.

At the same time, though, there’s signs that Rocketplane Kistler is not going to give up that funded COTS award without a fight. Space News reported this week that the company is already starting its appeal process within the agency, a three-step process that works its way up to NASA associate administrator Rich Gilbrech, who previously agreed to the decision to terminate the award. (That seems to suggest that RpK’s odds of success are low.) The company does have the option after that to file suit in federal court; that, though, would cost the company more time and money, and probably not create a lot of goodwill with NASA. One consolation: RpK is free to submit a proposal in the new competition by NASA to award the $175 million that was freed up when NASA terminated the original RpK contract.

I’m in Las Cruces, New Mexico for what is arguably the marquee week this year in the space tourism field: the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight this Wednesday and Thursday, and the X Prize Cup Saturday and Sunday at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo (where the event is billed as the “2007 Holloman Air and Space Expo Featuring The X Prize Cup”.)

The conference will be a good opportunity to get updates on the progress of various ventures (not the least of which being Rocketplane Kistler, now that the company has lost its funded COTS award), while the Cup will be headlined by the Lunar Lander Challenge, with Armadillo Aerospace likely to be the only team flying, unless Acuity, who has been developing their entry largely out of the media spotlight, has made more progress than publicly recognized. There are a number of other announcements by various companies expected at the Cup, primarily during a media day on Friday.

I will be posting updates from both the ISPS and the X Prize Cup, Internet connectivity permitting, as well as get caught up on some other recent developments I haven’t had an opportunity to post here. Also, as an experiment in up-to-the-microsecond microblogging, I’ll attempt to post some quick updates during the events on a newly-created Twitter feed.