SpaceShipOne, Space Launch acquisition revisited

A couple of articles in this week’s issue of The Space Review touch upon space tourism:

• I expanded my SpaceShipOne anniversary essay here into a full-length article about the state of the industry two years after SpaceShipOne’s historic flight. Things have taken longer than one might have thought a couple years ago because, in retrospect, SpaceShipOne was simply so much farther ahead of the competition than anyone thought at the time, and Scaled Composites is now focusing on a bigger, better vehicle rather than flying SS1.
• Taylor Dinerman explores the interesting announcement last month that Space Adventures was acquiring Space Launch Corporation. He sees the deal as a way for Space Adventures to tap the technical expertise it needs to oversee the development of future suborbital spacecraft that Space Adventures will be associated with, such as the Explorer vehicle in Russia.