A few odds and ends from the last week of 2007:

• The Washington Times reported on Richard Garriott’s planned flight to the ISS in 2008 in an article published on Christmas Day. In addition to Garriott’s plans to perform commercial experiments on his flight, the article notes that “companies are invited to develop advertising campaigns or commercials that Mr. Garriott could shoot in space.”
• The British newspaper The Guardian reexamines Virgin Galactic’s plans to perform suborbital spaceflights from Kiruna, Sweden, allowing passengers to fly through the aurora borealis. There’s not much news here, other than that a sounding rocket flight is planned for November with cameras on it “to find out what being inside the aurora actually looks like”; it apparently never occurred to scientists to do this before.
• In Monday’s The Telegraph, also from the UK, Jim White feels a blast of nostalgia for the heady days of the 1960s space race thanks to Virgin Galactic (with an assist to Wallace and Gromit). Virgin’s planned suborbital flights will be expensive, but “for many of us of a certain vintage it might well represent the finest value for money: I’m getting all excited about the possibility just writing about it.”

AFP reported yesterday that Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov suggested the end was near for tourist flights to the ISS on regular Soyuz taxi flights there. According to Perminov, the planned increase in the ISS crew size from three to six—expected by the end of the decade, when ISS assembly is complete—will leave no room on Soyuz taxi flights to the station for tourists. “I’m afraid that from 2009, tourism as we see it today may be discontinued,” Perminov said, according to the report.

Perminov did indicate that there is strong demand for such flights, enough that “we cannot satisfy all requests”. However, the article doesn’t address the possibility that additional Soyuz spacecraft could be manufactured, perhaps for dedicated tourist flights to the ISS (not to mention plans for circumlunar tourist flights). Space Adventures has reportedly been looking at what’s needed to increase the Soyuz production rate, so this report may be a little premature.

Another company is making an effort at developing a reality TV show with a space theme and prize. Isthmus, a paper in Madison, Wisconsin, reports that a pair of Univ. of Wisconsin alums are promoting a proposed reality TV series: “Geeks in Space” (featuring a trailer produced by Bo Ryan, the men’s basketball coach at UW). The concept: put a bunch of, well, geeks, in, um, space. Actually, a simulated spaceship here on Earth, where the contestants, in a bizarre array of costumes, would live together while competing in challenges. (Losing competitors are, humanely, not ejected out the airlock but instead put into a “freeze chamber” for the remainder of the show.)

The space tie-in comes from an agreement the producers have with Space Adventures. “They are willing to partner with us when the show sells and will provide many challenges and the ultimate prize,” said Megan Kaiser, one of the show’s creators, “a trip to the edge of space.” Since Space Adventures is not actively pushing suborbital spaceflight, one wonders how this would work if some network gives the show a green light.

Right now, though, the show is still a concept, despite pitches to some of the major broadcast networks and cable networks like, logically, the Sci-Fi Channel. “So far, every network has loved our show, but for one reason or another, has yet to make us an offer,” said Kaiser. However, if that writers’ strike drags on, you never know…

Apologies for the short notice, but Eric Anderson of Space Adventures and his latest client for a Soyuz flight to the ISS, Richard Garriott, will be on WAMU-FM in Washington DC at 12 noon today on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, talking about space tourism. If you’re not in Washington and/or can’t listen at noon, archives of the show should be available on the web site later today.

News reports out of Melbourne, Australia over the weekend indicated that Space Adventures had selected an Australian-born millionaire to be the backup to Richard Garriott on his trip to the ISS next October. “Self-described ‘thrillionaire’ Nik Halik has been named as the back-up crewman for next year’s October commercial flight to the International Space Station,” reported the Herald Sun. Another paper, The Age, also reported that Halik said that he had been selected as the backup for the trip, putting him in “a good position to lead the next flight in 2009″.

There’s just one problem with all this, as you might imagine upon reading this far: Halik hasn’t been selected yet by Space Adventures to be the backup. According to company spokesperson Stacey Tearne, Halik is indeed one of the candidates to pay $3 million to be Garriott’s backup, but no decision has been made. A selection will be made in January “at the latest”, she said in an email this morning.

Little details like that aren’t stopping Halik from dreaming big, though. According to the Herald Sun he said he wants not only to go to the ISS some day, but also “be one of the first to colonise the moon”. “By 2018, the Japanese want to colonise it and have a moon base and use it to explore the galaxy,” he told the paper. (This may be news to the Japanese.)

It appears that Halik, who made his money through investments and investment seminars (”over 31,178 people have already attended his Mastery Educational Events”), has been pursuing this goal for some time, according to this 2006 article:

In 2003, Nik commenced his training through the Russian Orbital Space Program. Having completed his Edge of Space supersonic flight and Zero Gravity training flight just recently in Moscow, he will be the first recorded Australian civilian to fly Sub-Orbit soon, qualifying him the status of being certified as an astronaut. The next adventure after this will be his ultimate mission and destiny to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) for a fortnight orbital stay. Nik, alongside his sponsors is planning on executing the first history making stock market trade in SPACE.

Space Adventures announced today that, for the first time, it is selling the opportunity to be the backup crew member for one of its Soyuz space tourists. For $3 million, that person would go through the same six-month training program in Russia as Richard Garriott, the company’s next orbital customer; they are particularly interested in someone who can not only afford the training but also “is able to be an active participant in Richard’s mission, to include being featured in a documentary TV series,” according to Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson. (The press release also points out that Anousheh Ansari was originally training in 2006 as a backup to Daisuke Enomoto, but got to fly when Enomoto suffered some kind of medical problem.) And, yes, that $3 million can be “credited in-full” towards a future orbital or even lunar spaceflight, Anderson added. Time would appear to be of the essence, since Garriott plans to start training in Russia after the first of the year.

Space Adventures announced this morning that Richard Garriott will be the company’s next customer to fly to the ISS on a Soyuz mission. Garriott’s flight is scheduled for October 2008, the next scheduled taxi flight with an open seat. Garriott is billed as the first “second generation” astronaut: his father, Owen Garriott, was a NASA astronaut who flew on Skylab and the Space Shuttle.

In the Space Adventures press release, Richard Garriott said that he is devoting his flight to science: “It is my goal to devote a significant amount of my time aboard the space station to science, engineering and educational projects. I understand the necessity for conducting research in extreme environments whether it is collecting microorganisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents to carrying out experiments in the continuous micro-gravity of Earth orbit.” He already has one research partner: ExtremoZyme, a biotech company founded by his father.

Garriott’s selection was not surprising given some of the rumors going around in recent weeks. As noted here earlier this month, the South Korean press had reported that Garriott might be the next space tourist. Garriott is the CEO of the North American division of NCSoft, a Korean gaming company, which had been rumored to bankroll any trip he might take (NCSoft isn’t mentioned as a sponsor in the announcement.)

And, as you might expect, Richard Garriott already has a web site devoted to his trip.

A lucky Dutch radio listener will win a suborbital spaceflight, according to a report by Radio Netherlands. The Dutch station “Q-music” is giving away the suborbital flight, provided by Space Adventures; the winner will be announced Saturday during an event at an aviation and space museum in Lelystad. The article is a bit skeptical about whether the winner will actually get to fly into space, given that Space Adventures has made little progress on its suborbital space tourism plans: “It will take years before they’re able to stage a space flight, if at all.”

The Radio Netherlands piece does devote some time to those who claim that space tourism is detrimental to the environment, interviewing Peter van Vliet, who runs a “foundation that promotes sustainability”. Van Vliet claims that emissions from suborbital spacecraft are particularly harmful to the upper levels of the atmosphere, although he doesn’t cite any specific data on such effects (which, of course, would depend on the composition and volume of the emissions.) He claims that space tourism is “unacceptable” in an era where there is growing concern about climate change and the environment: “It’s a classic case of something you just can’t do anymore, in this day and age.” Dangerous words.

Who will be the next commercial passenger to take a ride to the ISS on a Soyuz spacecraft in late 2008? Most of the recent speculation has focused on a Russian, after the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, said last week that a “prominent Russian businessman-turned-politician” (as described in an article in The Moscow Times on Monday) was “next in line” to be a space tourist. That mysterious person has since been identified as Vladimir Gruzdev, a “tycoon-explorer” who is the co-owner of the Russian grocery market chain Seventh Continent. Gruzdev also participated in the recent Russian Arctic expedition, where, in a controversial move, a submersible planted a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. (There’s some images about that expedition on Gruzdev’s Russian-language web site.)

While Gruzdev may be the first Russian space tourist (he certainly has both the adventurous streak and the money to pay for the trip), is he going to be the next paying passenger to the ISS? Maybe not. An article in Thursday’s edition of The Korea Times discusses a Zero-G aircraft flight that the CEO of computing gaming company NCSoft, Kim Taek-jin, took this week in the US. Kim himself doesn’t appear to be a candidate for a Soyuz trip, but the CEO of the company’s North American division, Richard Garriott, may be in line for a trip. A source tells the Korea Times: “Garriott is rumored to be on board for a 2008 shot to the space station. It is to be announced in early October along with his new game, ‘Tabula Rasa.’ He can then play his new game from outer space.” Garriott doesn’t have the funds to pay for the trip himself, so presumably the company would be bankrolling the trip. Garriott also has an insider connection: he is on the board of directors for Space Adventures. In a 2005 interview with Sam Dinkin for The Space Review, he explained how he helped open the door for orbital space tourism around 2000, even if a financial reversal prevented him from going himself.

Space Adventures has, as usual, remained tight-lipped about their potential upcoming orbital clients. In a speech last week at the AGI Users Exchange conference in Washington, Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson (himself a former AGI employee) did say that they hoped to have a space tourist perform a spacewalk during a trip to the ISS, perhaps in 2009.

On Tuesday shareholders in Russian aerospace company RSC Energia, which includes the Russian government, officially named Vitaly Lopota as the company’s new president. Lopota replaces Nikolai Sevastianov, who was effectively ousted last month. Sevastianov got into trouble in part by making bold pronouncements about plans to return to the moon, ranging from far-fetched proposals to mine the lunar regolith for helium-3 to proposals to fly Soyuz missions on circumlunar missions around the Moon. The latter, of course, has been something that Space Adventures has been trying to line up paying passengers for, at $100 million for each of two available seats.

Lopota appears to be distancing himself from those lunar mission plans. For example, Itar-Tass noted that Energia will coordinate its announcements with the Russian space agency Roskosmos because, previously, “Sevastianov often declared plans for manned space flights that disagreed with the official position of the agency and the federal space program for 2006-2015.” RIA Novosti reported that Sevastianov “has been repeatedly criticized, primarily for his daring projects relating to lunar exploration, branded “lunacy” by the Space Agency”. (The irony of branding lunar exploration plans as “lunacy” is apparently lost on Novosti’s editors.) These comments suggest that proposals to modify Soyuz spacecraft for circumlunar missions may be shifted to the back burner under Energia’s new leadership.