One issue not raised with last week’s announcement of Guy Laliberté as the next commercial ISS visitor is who his backup would be should he be unable to fly. Yesterday Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson hinted that an announcement was forthcoming, saying only that the person was “a very talented and special lady”. However, the Russian news service Interfax beat him to it, reporting Thursday that Barbara Barrett would back up Laliberté and that both had started training.

So who is Barbara Barrett? Her Wikipedia bio describes her as an “International business and aviation attorney, Businesswoman, Diplomat, [and] Rancher.” Among other accomplishments, she has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and became the first civilian woman to land an F/A-18 on an aircraft carrier (although there is some debate in the talk page associated with the Wikipedia entry about whether she actually landed the plane or was just along for the ride.) She served briefly as US ambassador to Finland last year and has been on a number of boards, including the Aerospace Corporation. She is also married to Craig Barrett, the retired CEO and chairman of Intel.

As expected yesterday, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté announced his plans to fly to the ISS at the end of September on the next Soyuz flight to the station. Laliberté is calling his flight the “Poetic Social Mission” in space “to raise humanity’s awareness of water-related issues” for his One Drop Foundation. “Information about our world’s water-related issues will be conveyed using a singular poetic approach,” according to the site, including a poem he is writing with a Quebec poet with other forms of “artistic performance” as well.

The press conference itself was an odd affair, split between Moscow, where Laliberté was, and Montreal, where Canadian Space Agency president Steve MacLean spoke. (CSA is providing advice to Laliberté, but no other overt support.) This meant that Russian, English, and French were all spoken at the press conference, with Laliberté answering questions in the latter two languages. Oddly, while the press conference provided Russian-English (and, presumably, Russian-French) translations, there were no English-French translations, especially during the Q&A. (Laliberté read his opening statement in French first, then English.) Anglophone viewers were thus shut out of the information he provided in his responses in French, and vice versa.

Laliberté did say that he had been in Star City since May 10 for medical tests, which he has passed. Prior to getting started he exchanged emails with the two previous commercial visitors to the ISS, Charles Simonyi and Richard Garriott, getting guidance on the experience and other issues, including life in Star City. As for the price of the trip, Laliberté would not disclose a figure, citing confidentiality agreements, but said it was “pretty similar” to recent trips, which have been estimated to cost $35 million.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) made an unusual announcement Monday: it would hold a press conference Thursday morning about the first Canadian space tourist, who would perform “the first philanthropic mission to the International Space Station”. The identity of that person, and the nature of that mission, were not immediately disclosed.

We do now, though, have a better idea of at least who will be going. NASA Watch first reported Tuesday morning that the tourist is Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil. With a net worth as high as $2.5 billion, he certain has the means to pay for such a trip; moreover, this year is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Cirque. The Canadian Press also confirmed it was Laliberté, citing “a source close to the mission”.

Whoever the mystery Canadian customer is, he’ll be flying to the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft, scheduled for launch in late September on a regular taxi mission to the ISS. Space Adventures announced in April that a seat on that mission might be available since a Kazakh cosmonaut scheduled to fly had apparently been removed by the Russian space agency. At an April press telecon Eric Anderson didn’t indicate who it would be or how long they would have to fill the seat. Also unclear now is how much time, if any, Laliberté has spent training in Russia already.

Another area of interest is what the CSA’s role is in this mission. They are participating in the press conference, with CSA president Steve Maclean scheduled to speak. Canada’s standing on the ISS is higher now than ever, with Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk already on the station for a long-duration mission and another Canadian, Julie Payette, scheduled to visit the station later this month on the STS-127 shuttle mission.

Last week Space Adventures announced that they believed that there was a chance a seat would open up on a September Soyuz flight to the ISS that may allow them to fly another tourist to the station. And indeed that seat, which was to be occupied by a Kazakh cosmonaut, does appear to be open. According to the Xinhua news agency, Kazakhstan has “indefinitely postponed” plans to send a cosmonaut to the station, citing a lack of funding.

But who will fill that seat? Last Friday Space Adventures’s Eric Anderson said the seat could be filled by either one of their customers or a Russian professional cosmonaut. A headline on the Interfax news service Thursday, though, stated: “Russian or Japanese astronauts may replace Kazakh in September flight toISS” (the text of the article, unfortunately, was not available). Unless the Japanese astronaut is a Space Adventures customer, it would seem the company may be shut out of this flight opportunity. However, Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov did say in another Interfax article earlier this week that future tourist flight opportunities would depend on NASA’s decision on the shuttle program, with the apparent implication that a shuttle life extension might free up some seats on Soyuz flights for commercial passengers.

Software developer Symantec announced Wednesday the winner of its contest to send someone into space: Jorge Patricio León López, who was selected from 30 finalists after participating in a weightless aircraft flight by Zero-G. As the press release claims, “In addition to being one of the first to participate in a commercial space travel flight, León could be the first Chilean in space as no Chilean has participated in a space flight at this time.”

But, as you might expect, there’s a catch. The suborbital flight that León won is provided by Space Adventures, which (as noted here a few months ago), isn’t emphasizing the suborbital side of its business, so it’s not at all clear when León might fly, and how. That would, though, follow a trend of Chilean efforts get one of its citizens in space: for several years Klaus Von Storch waited for everything to come together for a slot on a Soyuz mission to the ISS; that article was written in 2006 and, three years later, he still is grounded. Hopefully, when either Von Storch or León flies, they don’t end up like this fellow.

Space Adventures sent out an announcement late Thursday that they will be holding a teleconference for media Friday at 1 pm EDT to “discuss [the] future of space tourism, [and] available seats for upcoming orbital flights”. From the announcement:

Join Eric Anderson, co-founder, president and CEO of Space Adventures, to discuss the future of space tourism. As Dr. Charles Simonyi prepares for his return to Earth from the International Space Station amid reports he is the “last space tourist,” Eric Anderson will discuss Space Adventures’ upcoming missions – including a new and exciting development.

I am hoping my travel plans will allow me to call in for this, and if so, will report here on what that “new and exciting development” turns out to be.

Compared to the good ol’ days (2001), a space tourist flying to the ISS these days is a little, well, ho-hum. Back in 2001 there was all the drama associated with whether NASA would allow Dennis Tito to fly to the station on a Soyuz, and if so, what sort of reception he would get when he got there. Today, while tourist visits to the ISS are far from routine, there’s enough of a precedent that the flight has to be particularly special to capture much attention—and in this case, with Charles Simonyi being the first tourist to make a return trip, it registers only modestly on the media’s radar.

The flight has also gotten some attention because Simonyi might be the “last” space tourist, at least for some time. Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson tells SPACE.com that there’s a slim chance of some flight opportunities in 2010 or 2011, but the company appears to be basing its future plans on a dedicated flight in 2011 or 2012.

Assuming there are future flight opportunities, either next year or in a few years, one person who appears interested—and has more than enough money to pay for the trip—is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The AP reports that Allen, who was at Baikonur to watch Thursday’s launch, said he was interested in following Simonyi into orbit at some point. “It’s a few years off,” he told the AP.

On Wednesday I had a long telephone interview with Charles Simonyi, scheduled to make a return trip to the International Space Station late next month. (The interview got delayed a couple hours because his training that day ran long.) I plan to have a more complete account of the interview in Monday’s issue of The Space Review, but in the meantime here are some highlights from the interview:

• Because he’s already flown to space before and gone through the complete training process, his training for this trip is far more condensed, starting just in January. Just this week he started training with the other two members of the Soyuz crew, Gennady Padalka and Michael Barrett.
• He is planning to do many of the same activities as he did on his 2007 flight, including a space radiation experiment and some medical tests. He also plans to perform a number of contacts with schools through amateur radio links. He said that since this will be his second trip, he believes he’ll be more effective since he’ll be used to the environment and known what to expect while on the station.
• He said he didn’t suffer from space sickness on his first trip and is thus optimistic he won’t have problems on this flight. He noted that Russians and Americans training for 0-g differently, with Russians relying more on ways to desensitize the vestibular system through things like rotating chairs. He said that may make a difference, but there’s too little data to draw conclusions on what is more effective in general.
• Unlike a number of other Space Adventures clients, he does not object to being called a “space tourist” or the official space agency term “spaceflight participant”. Tourism, he believes, is an important early market for commercial spaceflight that can enable the development of additional markets down the road.
• While he believes in the potential of space tourism, he’s not interested in putting his money into any of the ventures in this market: “I’m not an investor, I’m a customer.”
• Asked if this would be his last flight into space, he said he promised his wife that he would not fly again—at least for a long time. “Maybe in 20 years it will be so common we’ll do it together.”

He also added that the web site developed to track his first flight, Charles in Space, would soon be updated with information about his upcoming mission. And, in fact, it was updated Thursday.

Update: here’s the interview itself, if you missed it.

A roundup of space tourism news from across the globe:

Our first stop is Davos, Switzerland, where Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson says “business is good” for the space tourism company. Anderson, attending the World Economic Forum, said he’s looking for additional customers, but potential clients “should not expect any bargains because of the global financial turmoil.”

While we’re in Europe, check out a Flight International report on new European vehicle studies funded by the EU’s Future High-Altitude High-Speed Transport (FAST) 20XX program, to the tune of nearly $10 million. The effort is looking at two concepts: a relatively near-term (circa 2015) suborbital vehicle and a long-term hypersonic point-to-point transport. (How long term? Try 2075.) The funding is only for early-stage technology studies; where the money would come from for further development, even of the suborbital vehicle, is unclear.

The prospects for space tourism in China is examined in an Asia Times article this week. Industry officials agree that there’s tremendous potential in the Chinese market given its size, but for US companies export control restrictions would make it difficult to do business there. Also, the lack of a commercial space regulatory framework in China would hinder any effort for a domestic space tourism industry to develop.

There is, though, interest in space tourism in Mexico. The English-language Guadalajara Reporter said that an anonymous local businessman has signed up to fly with Virgin Galactic, becoming the first person from Mexico’s second-largest city to reserve a flight to space. Viajes Capistrano, the tourist agency who is one of five in the country that sells Virgin Galactic trips, is planning to make a bigger push for clients in the city in coming weeks.

The commercial space community was atwitter (figuratively and literally) over a Russian news report that Russia planned to end taking space tourists to the ISS after this March’s return trip by Charles Simonyi. The implication was that there wouldn’t again be any other means of visiting the ISS.

However, this report is hardly the breaking news some made it out to be. Almost a year ago Flight International reported that Russia wasn’t planning to offer additional flights after this spring as it geared up for supporting six-person crews on the station. Yesterday’s statement by Roskosmos director Anatoly Perminov is consistent with this.

What’s changed since then, though, was the announcement last June that Space Adventures had arranged with Roskosmos a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in 2011 that would carry two passengers, one of whom is likely to be Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Does Perminov’s statement yesterday mean that this deal is off? There’s been no comment on this statement by Space Adventures, but even back in June there was conflicting statements from Roskosmos officials about the mission. When I talked with Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson after that statement, he said the confusion resulted in part because there had been no formal notification that Brin would be flying to the station (since no firm commitments had been made yet).

Another factor to take into account is that statements like Perminov’s have a political dimension as well, particularly within Russia. A statement like Perminov’s can show that Russia’s space program is strong enough not to have to rely on income from foreign space tourists, and/or press for more financial support from the Russian government. It certainly doesn’t mean that the airlock is sealed permanently for commercial visitors to the ISS.