By Samuel M. Coniglio, IV

National Public Radio's Marketplace is interviewing Lou Dobbs, former CNN Financial News anchor, and now producer of Space.com on Wednesday, October 6 at 6:30 pm PST (check your local radio listings). Space.com is a new web site devoted to all types of space-related news.

At 2:19 pm today, the Space Shuttle Discovery carried US Senator John Glenn and six other astronauts into orbit in a nearly flawless launch. Glenn, the second American in space in 1961, returns to space at age 77.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article about the pilot for Advent Launch Services. Vaughn Cordle holds 44 world aviation records, all from passenger planes. He wants to be the first civilian pilot to fly into space. Advent's launch vehicle will be named the Mayflower II.

IP Space Tours GmbH just released a report on the media coverage of the first International Symposium on Space Tourism. It was held from March 20-22, 1997 in Bremen, Germany. Here are the statistics from coverage in Germany: 1.560,000 listeners on radio, 30,706,196 readers on print media, and 34,800,000 viewers on television are estimated to have seen or heard about the event. Through wire reports such as Associated Press, ISST was reported in dozens of countries, including the United States.

Another important measurement was the style of the news reports. All of the reports accepted the vision of space tourism as serious. Only one out of 101 reports was negative. The rest were ranged from neutral to enthusiastic.

Space Tours' report included details of the German media outlets, and photocopies of several newspaper articles (all in German, of course).