A "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans" chaired by Norman Augustine has recently been anounced, to report at the end of August or later. A potentially important piece of good news is that "stimulating commercial space flight capability" is one of the subjects to be addressed by the review.

The first symposium on Personal Access to Space held by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) in Arcachon, France, May 28-30, 2008, was a mixture of both the encouraging and the discouraging.

After taking eight years to get licenced to provide parabolic flight services to the general public, Zero Gravity Corporation finally started its long-awaited service on September 14.

There is considerable controversy about the June 21st flight of SpaceShipOne, with some commentators saying that it is of little importance. So here is Space Future's view.

Scaled Composites has announced that SpaceShipOne will make its first flight to space on June 21, 2004 – a date that will live in the history of space flight along with those of other epoch-making flights, such as the first ever flight to space, by Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and the first private flight to space, by Dennis Tito on April 28, 2001.

In a characteristically stimulating presentation at the session on Space Tourism of the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF-2004) on Monday February 9, Chuck Lauer, Vice President for Business Development at Pioneer Rocketplane Inc, confirmed that the company had finalised an agreement with Spaceport Oklahoma (officially OSIDA, the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority) to develop the passenger-carrying XP Rocketplane, which will be capable of sub-orbital flights, at Burns Flat in Oklahoma. The XP is an adapted Learjet, with a rocket engine being developed by Orbitec Inc. It is not primarily targeting the “X Prize” but the sub-orbital passenger market, including tourism. “But if no-one else has won the X-Prize by 2006, then we will” Lauer said.

As the test flight program of Scaled Composites Inc's sub-orbital, passenger-carrying rocketplane "SpaceShipOne" progresses steadily, it performed its second gliding flight on August 27. Described on Scaled Composites' web-site the flight successfuly achieved all its objectives, which are listed as:

Scandinavian Connection To Space (SCTS) has recently been established in Sweden to promote the realisation of space tourism. Like a number of other companies, SCTS will act as an agent for space tourism-related services as they become available, while also working to raise finance to help it to happen. The principal, Paul Eklund, says to keep an eye on their web-site for announcements in the near future.

XCOR Aerospace, the rocket development company, partnered with Space Adventures, the US space tourism travel agency, has recently announced its new “Xerus” project to develop a sub-orbital rocket-plane capable of making passenger flights to an altitude of 100 km.

Both Aviation Week magazine (July 22, p 53) and Space News (July 22, p4) report that the Russian Aviation and Space Agency has announced its intention to fly Lance Bass on board the late October "Taxi flight" to the space station. The July 12 announcement leaves less than six months until his flight, which does not keep the letter of the Russians’ agreement with their international partners in the space station project. However, the other countries are said to be okay with this, since they recognise the financial benefit that the Russian space agency gets from its paying customers.