You may already know this, but in a move designed to make me (and you?) ever-so-slightly giddy, Paul Allen (SpaceShipOne) and Richard Branson (Virgin Airways) have decided to join forces and get a space tourism business up and running by 2007. It’s only $198,600 a pop for a three-hour tour, so start saving (Oh, yeah, there’s going to be a space hotel, too)! Check out the Virgin Galactic site — fun!

Seems reasonable to me: If you want to know whether astronauts could handle an extended-duration mission to Mars, “ask an astronaut”:http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/040923/foale.shtml. Specifically, ask one who has logged over a year on orbit, including a 6-month stint living with just one other cosmonaut. His advice? Don’t sweat the niceties, and don’t skimp on oxygen.

This just in: “SpaceDev”:http://www.spacedev.com/, the San Diego company that provides “SpaceShipOne”:http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sso_rutan_archive.html’s revolutionary hybrid rocket engine, is developing “Dream Chaser”:http://www.spacedev.com/newsite/templates/subpage_article.php?pid=489, a low-cost sub-orbital spacecraft. Not limited to X-Prize ranges, Dream Chaser is designed to scale up to the point where people can be delivered to and from Low Earth Orbit (read: “space station”:http://www.space.com/news/businessmonday_040524.html).

Space Daily has an engaging “overview of X Prize progress”:http://www.spacedaily.com/news/xprize-04u.html, including both the trials and the triumphs of the frontrunners. Even the mistakes are exciting, as fun to follow as the series of progressively-more-impressive rocket tests in “October Sky”. Go teams!

Cassini has just gone through a “gap” in the rings of Saturn where it still managed to be pelted with microscopic particles for a while. The neat part is that they made a sound recording of it all with a QT movie that I think is a simulation. Ah, the pebble-y sound of space (from inside, where it’s safe).