To update my earlier post, I spoke briefly yesterday with Eric Anderson of Space Adventures to try and clarify any apparent contradictions between the company’s announcements and statements by the Russian space agency Roskosmos. Anderson said that Perminov’s statement that he had “no information about such plans” was reference to reports about Sergey Brin flying to the station; Space Adventures, in fact, has not formally informed the Russians about Brin since he had not signed up for a specific flight yet. Perminov was apparently responding to some reports that Brin was going to be the next space tourist, which is not what Space Adventures announced last week.

As for the “space tourism will be temporarily suspended” statement, Anderson said Perminov was referring to the period when the station crew size increases to six, which will make it more difficult to find a seat for a commercial passenger. “I’m not prepared to say it’s impossible,” he said, “but it is significantly more difficult.” Space Adventures does still have another flight opportunity in the spring of 2009, Anderson confirmed, but has not announced a customer for that mission.

One other note: at the press conference last week, Brin was announced as the first member of Space Adventures’ “Orbital Mission Explorers Circle”. Anderson said that “within one hour” of that announcement, he had signed up the second member of that group, but did not identify that individual.

An article in Saturday’s edition of Florida Today reports that NASA “was among the last to know” about Space Adventures’ plans for a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in late 2011. Of course, NASA didn’t need to be consulted prior to the announcement, so that’s not too surprising, although NASA and the other international partners in the ISS will need to approve the overall mission plan, just as they do any major developments in the assembly and operation of the mission.

A more serious issue, though, is whether the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, is on board. The Space Adventures press release about the mission includes a quote from a Roskosmos official, Alexey B. Krasnov, who says that the agency is “very pleased to continue working with Space Adventures into the foreseeable future.” However, in a statement published Thursday on the Roskosmos web site (in Russian), the head of the space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said he was unaware of any plans for sending additional tourists to the station, citing in particular Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “I have no information about such plans,” he said, according to a machine translation of the release. He added that as the station’s crew complement is expanded from three to six people, starting next year, “space tourism will be temporarily suspended”. The Roskosmos statement, though, doesn’t specifically mention the dedicated mission, or the possibility that the “temporarily suspended” period might stretch only from early 2009 (the last available seat on a regular Soyuz taxi flight) until the planned dedicated mission in late 2011.

There’s more discussion about these conflicting statements at RussianSpaceWeb.com, while Flight’s Rob Coppinger expresses his own general skepticism about the announcement. I contacted Space Adventures on Friday to get some clarification on the nature of their agreement with Roskosmos, any why Perminov might think there’s no such deal, but have not received a response from the company.

Here are some of the key items from this morning’s press conference held by Space Adventures about their future plans (see their press release for some additional details):

• The first major announcement was that the company has reached an agreement with Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, for a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in the second half of 2011. There will be a single cosmonaut pilot and two seats available for sale by Space Adventures.
• That flight, and potentially others to follow, is in addition to the seats they have on the regular Soyuz taxi flights to the ISS this fall (for Richard Garriott) and next spring (for a person yet to be announced). Going forward the company wants to do at least one flight to the ISS per year for as long as the station remains in operation.
• The second major announcement was the creation of an “Orbital Mission Explorers Circle”. People who join this group pay a deposit for a future orbital flight and gain preferential access to seats on future flights, or can sell their reservation to someone else.
• There will be six founding members of this Explorers Circle, the first of whom is Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. Brin, like other founding members, is paying a $5-million deposit. Brin was not present at the press conference, but there was a short statement by him where he said he was a “big believer” in the commercial development of space.
• Space Adventures is shying away from the label of being a “space tourism company. “What we’re doing is opening the frontier,” Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, said. “This is private space exploration.” This includes, as a part of it, tourism, he said, but only as part of a larger vision of the company.
• Garriott, taking a short break from training to attend the press conference in New York, said he is not terribly concerned about the recent Soyuz reentry problems, although he said he will be “avidly” reading the report on the April ballistic reentry when it’s completed in about a month.
• Peter Diamandis said that Zero G, the parabolic flight company that he co-founded and was acquired earlier this year by Space Adventures (another company Diamandis helped found), has made 200 commercial flights to date, flying over 5,000 people. He wants to ramp that up to 10,000 people a year within a couple of years, and eventually reach 100,000 people a year. Zero G will soon start making $1 million in changes to one of its two 727 aircraft so it can be used for NASA flights under terms of a contract announced earlier this year.
• Anderson said he is a “huge fan” of suborbital spaceflight in general and Virgin Galactic in particular. Space Adventures, he said, is interested in partnering with one or more suborbital companies to sell flights, but will wait until there are vehicles flying before making any announcements in that area.

An intriguing short item in today’s San Jose Mercury News about the Space Adventures press conference later today:

Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.

A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.

Update: The New York Times has a more detailed report this morning, but with the same essential details.

Brin clearly has an interest in space: he spoke by video at the unveiling of the Google Lunar X Prize last September, and Google has a close relationship with NASA’s Ames Research Center. And for someone of Brin’s wealth, the $25-30 million (or so) needed for an orbital flight is veritable pocket change. We’ll find out in a few hours if it’s true…

In an announcement whose timing was a bit surprising but also not entirely unexpected, Scaled Composites revealed that Burt Rutan would be stepping down as president and would be replaced by Doug Shane, who had been vice president of Scaled and also served as a test pilot for the company. Rutan will remain with the company as CTO and “chairman emeritus”, positions that Scaled said in the statement will allow him to focus on the company’s creative and entrepreneurial strengths.

Rutan’s long-term future with Scaled had been in question given the health problems he had in the last several months (although he appeared in good health when he spoke at the International Space Development Conference in Washington last week), as well as the acquisition of the company by Northrop Grumman. “I suggested this change to our organizational structure because I want to focus on developing our talented, innovative team and ensuring we continue to provide our customers the creative technical approaches that only Scaled offers,” Rutan said in the Scaled statement. “I am successfully recovering from about 8 months of significant heart health challenges, and with this move look forward to many more years of fun here at Scaled.”

The X Prize Foundation announced late Friday afternoon that the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) will be held at Holloman AFB in New Mexico on October 24-25. Unlike the past two years, the LLC appears to be taking place as a standalone event and not part of an X Prize Cup. The press release notes that “the public can follow the action” via webcast, with no mention of public attendance at the event itself, or any other activities associated with previous Cups.

This would appear to be in line with previous rumors about the event, which indicated that it would be held at Holloman immediately after the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, which will take place in Las Cruces on October 22-23. (Those earlier reports suggested that symposium attendees would be allowed to attend the LLC; there’s no mention of that in the X Prize release.) This has to be seen as something of a step back for the X Prize Foundation, which had touted the Cups as a way to connect the public to the emerging personal spaceflight industry. This approach, though, does allow them to meet the requirement to hold an annual LLC competition while minimizing expenditures.

Space Adventures sent out a media advisory yesterday announcing a press conference planned for Wednesday, June 11, in New York. The press conference will reveal the identity of a “notable future orbital client” as well as “significant announcements regarding new orbital spaceflight planning”, including a “vision for the next decade”. Richard Garriott, currently in training for a Soyuz flight this fall, will be at the press conference, along with Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis.