Taking the Pulse of Personal Spaceflight

By Leonard David Special Correspondent, SPACE.com posted: 11 October 2007 06:49 am ET

GOLDEN, Colorado – The prospect of public space travel has shot past the high-volume "giggle factor" of a few years ago. Companies around the globe are busy at work hammering out passenger-carrying spaceship designs, banking on a hoped-for lucrative suborbital travel market.

But adventure seekers lining up at a spaceport's departure gate is one thing ... yet another is how best private space firms can financially fuel their respective dream machines, as well as sort through a labyrinth of regulatory, insurance, and safety hoops.

To take the current pulse of the commercial spaceflight industry, you can put yourself at month's end on a trajectory that propels you to New Mexico and the Third International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS-2007).

ISPS is being held October 24-25 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the opening event of this year's 2007 Wirefly X Prize Cup to be staged a few days later at neighboring Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.

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