When Marianne Dyson, former NASA Mission Control specialist and author of “Space Station Science,” speaks with school children, she uses an exercise to demonstrate the difficulty of working in space. She has them try to pick a dime off a table top...while wearing boxing gloves.

Richard Garriott has the best geek cred, ever. Not only was his father an astronaut, but also he earned a not-so-small fortune writing videogames. Garriott plays with the most awesome toys (he owns a freakin’ Sputnik), lives in the coolest house (featured on HGTV and MTV’s Cribs), and has the most fun of anyone you’ll ever meet.

On March 25, 2010, at a private showing at New York City’s Core Club, Richard Garriott screened his documentary, Man on a Mission, about his experiences as a spaceflight participant.

by Carol Pinchefsky with G.B. Leatherwood

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.

Dr. Simonyi is currently on his second trip to space, which is the seventh civilian trip brokered by US company Space Adventures. However, it will be the last for civilian space explorers for the foreseeable future. Due to expansion of the International Space Station ( ISS) crew from three to six starting in April, there will be no extra seats aboard the Soyuz capsules for non-professional space travelers.

In a hastily arranged teleconference on Friday, 3 April 2009, Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson laid out some new developments for the company, the only one in the world that has arranged for private citizens to travel to the International Space Station, starting with Dennis Tito in 2001.

“The second time around” usually refers to marriages, love affairs, and attempts to finish what one started.

This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved Spaceport America’s environmental impact statement, and even more important, the launch site operator’s license. These two steps are needed to turn the temporary launch facility into the United State’s first spaceport specifically designed for the space tourism industry.

Jeff Greason, president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, has selected Jules Klar, the president of Great American Travel who founded “$5-a-Day Tours” in 1961, as the agent for flights on XCOR’s spaceplane, the Lynx Mark I—which is now under construction at the XCOR facilities at the Mojave spaceport.