The following is excerpted from the Avweb weekly newsletter. Thought you might enjoy it. Brent THE NEXT CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT STEP TOWARD SPACE... Last week on Capitol Hill, the nascent "alternative space industry" barely deflected a potential meltdown -- a bill that was written to help boost space tourism came within hours of being passed with a new provision that some say would have killed the whole idea. In its original form, the legislation would have allowed paying passengers to fly into space as long as they were fully informed about the risks and signed a consent form. But during House-Senate negotiations, the bill was amended to charge the FAA with responsibility for the "safety of crew and spaceflight participants." More... ...WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM?... While lots of companies are eager to develop new space technologies, they won't get far without financial backing. One source of that money, paradoxically, may be NASA. "NASA has just received close to 4,000 proposals for advanced technologies for space exploration from private companies, and they will be giving away something like $600 million over the next year or so for new concepts, new ideas and new technologies," Jerry Grey, director for aerospace policy at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told NPR on Friday. Meanwhile, Walt Anderson, CEO of Orbital Recovery Corp., warned the annual conference of the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday that fledgling U.S. companies may lose out to entrepreneurs around the globe if the U.S. doesn't get the regulatory climate right. More... ...AS STUDY SHOWS THE MARKET EXISTS Futron Corp., whose space-tourism market study has been frequently cited by the alternative-space entrepreneurs, recently released the entire 79-page study to the public domain. The study, originally published in 2002, is based on a poll of affluent Americans. The poll gauged the level of interest in, and willingness to pay for, space tourism experiences among those people with the means to afford such flights. Futron used the poll results to generate a 20-year forecast for consumer demand for orbital and suborbital space tourism. Among Futron's findings: The overall space tourism market could generate revenues in excess of $1 billion per year by 2021; suborbital space tourism has the potential for 15,000 passengers and $700 million in revenues per year by 2021; and orbital space tourism could attract 60 passengers and $300 million in revenues per year by 2021. More... _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com