The Wall Street Journal reports that former astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson will join Benson Space Company as its chief operating officer and head test pilot. (Subscription required) The official announcement may come as early as today. Gibson has been listed as an “advisor” to the company since the company’s launch in late September. Since then, Gibson retired from his post-astronaut career as a pilot for Southwest Airlines when he reach the FAA-mandated retirement age of 60.

The WSJ article states that Gibson had been working with Benson since last year, when Benson, then running SpaceDev, was pursuing the NASA COTS demonstration competition. Benson said that Gibson will be able to fly the company’s Dream Chaser spacecraft “as much as he wants and we can afford” once it’s built.

Hiring Gibson certainly gives Benson Space come addition cachet and credibility, although it’s hardly unprecedented. Rocketplane Ltd, prior to its merger with Kistler Aerospace, hired former astronaut John Herrington as a vice president and test pilot for the XP suborbital vehicle. And just last month Andrews Space announced it had hired former astronaut Wendy Lawrence as a “senior advisor for human spaceflight and crew safety”.

In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Rocky Persaud reexamines the idea of “space sports” discussed last week in a Taylor Dinerman article. Persaud believes that zero-gravity sports (like the “Zero Gravity Football” his company, IPX Entertainment, is trying to develop) could spur public interest in spaceflight and space tourism. It’s in the interest of space sports promoters to encourage orbital space tourism in the long run, if for nothing else to have an in-person audience for their events: “Two teams facing off in zero gravity will be much more exciting to a television audience if they can hear the cheers and shouts of the people floating courtside. It might even make good marketing sense to make sure the arena is full by subsidizing or giving away those seats to the rich and famous who can pay for their own launch into orbit.”

Also in The Space Review this week, I interview Jim Benson about his decision to leave SpaceDev and create a new company, Benson Space Company. The genesis of Benson Space Company goes back to SpaceDev’s planning for the COTS competition, as an alternative means of bringing in private money to SpaceDev (through revenue rather than stock sales); Benson decided to proceed even though SpaceDev didn’t win a COTS award. I asked Benson how he would set his company apart from the various other ventures that are planning suborbital commercial spaceflight services in the next several years, and he believes that he can get the Dream Chaser into service before his competitors complete their vehicles: “I truly believe that Benson Space will be the first to market because we have absolutely the most elegant solution,” he said. “May the best company win.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in this morning’s issue that Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, is creating a new space tourism-oriented startup, Benson Space Company (BSC). (The Journal requires a subscription, but you may be able to read the article for free here). Benson is stepping down as chairman and CTO of SpaceDev to start the new venture, which will purchase Dream Chaser spacecraft from SpaceDev and operate them for suborbital and, later, orbital space tourism. Benson told the Journal that he has already raised an initial round of $1 million with “less than a dozen phone calls”; he eventually plans to raise on the order of $50 million to build and test Dream Chaser. (See also Alan Boyle’s coverage of the development at MSNBC’s Cosmic Log.)

A press release announcing the formation of BSC just hit the wires early this morning, and the company’s web site is also up, including a form to reserve a seat on a Dream Chaser flight. Ticket prices will be between $200,000 and $300,000, which would put BSC in the high range of planned suborbital space tourism operators.