Indian television network NDTV posted a transcript of a recent interview with Richard Branson. (The transcript is very rough; perhaps it has gone through multiple translations, such as from English to Hindi back to English, given the odd language found in it.) In the interview, Branson appears to indicate that SpaceShipTwo will be rolled out at the end of the year, followed by ninth months of test flights before beginning customer flights. He also says, puzzlingly, “In July of this year, we will fly them over ship for the first time”—a reference to the first flights of White Knight Two?

As for those occasional reports that William Shatner was offered (or had accepted) a flight on SS2, Branson said, “He definitely made it clear that he was quite frightened to go into the space and I got a feeling that he will never actually go into the space.” Regarding the risks of human spaceflight, he added, “anybody going into the space will have to accept that there are more inherited risks in the space travel than the airline travel. But we hope that within three years or so, it will be no great a risk.”

A press release yesterday by a company called Broadway Media (whose founder, Mitchell Schultz, also recently started Xtraordinary Adventures, a space tourism company) announced the unveiling of a new publication: Space Cruise News, billed as “the who, what, where, when and how in the race to suborbital space” (I guess you’ll have to go elsewhere to find out the “why”). “In today’s world of constant media frenzy, it’s often difficult to separate credibility from clutter,” the press release states. And certainly it would be helpful to have another source of information on top of the existing one that could help distinguish the two. So far, though, the product is not promising.

The site is claiming an “exclusive first”: that Robert Bigelow and Donald Trump are “close to a deal” to put Trump’s name on Bigelow Aerospace’s current and future expandable spacecraft. Sounds intriguing, except when you get into the details, like this: “…the TRUMP name on Bigalow’s [sic] Genesis I and II and perhaps III and more that will host the weary space traveler for the night.” Besides the misspelling of Bigelow’s name (which is consistently misspelled throughout the article), there is no Genesis 3 spacecraft planned (the company is moving ahead with Sundancer around 2010). Moreover, Bigelow and other company officials have emphatically stated on a number of occasions that they are nor in the hotel business, although they would be willing to lease their modules to companies that would operate them as tourist destinations. And, of course, neither Genesis 1 nor Genesis 2 are designed for human habitation.

A commenter on RLV and Space Transport News got a comment from Bigelow spokesman Chris Reed, who said that he had “heard nothing on my end about any negotiations between our company and Donald Trump,” and also reiterated that there would be no Genesis 3 mission.

“Lots of details to be worked out but it sound [sic] pretty spacey to us!” the report notes. Spacey? Maybe spaced out, instead. In its quest to separate “credibility from clutter”, this new publication is in danger of falling into the latter category.