Tourist space travel seemed like fiction in the past, but now it’s getting closer to reality. However, if you were hoping to do this on a rocket, be aware that there are options. The company Space Perspective has announced that it will take a trip to the “edge” of outer space with a (yes, yes) giant balloon.
Right after having carried out a first test, which reached an altitude of 33 kilometers, the space travel company now says it will offer the tour from 2024 onwards. The cost of the ticket will be US$ 125,000 (or R$ 613.5 thousand, in today’s quotation).
The high cost includes transporting another seven people for six hours in the balloon, entitled Spaceship Neptune. It has a bar and bathroom. It is expected to reach a height of 30 kilometers — around three times that of a normal plane.
The company says the launch will take place from the Space Coast Regional Airport in Florida, near the Kennedy Space Center, where NASA and SpaceX rockets depart. But the destination is still uncertain, as it will depend on how the winds will behave at the time.
Landing could take place in the Atlantic Ocean or near the Gulf of Mexico. The test conducted by Space Perspective last June 18 stopped at the second option.
Prototype test of the Spaceship Neptune technology
Image: Space Perspective
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In an interview with the website “Space News”, the company’s co-founder, Jane Poynter, said that 25 interested people were registered during an online event to announce the novelty, which took place on the 23rd. But the total number of candidates would already be “much bigger”.
Anyone interested in the project does not need to pay everything at once. For now, the company is asking for a first payment of “only” US$1,000 (about R$4,900).
Race for space tourism
The initiative of this space tour is just one more in the great dispute for the space tourism market. The company bets on a cheaper price and on the eccentricity of traveling with a balloon, but it has heavy competition.
Who is also vying for space in this market is the Blue Origin, of the billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Virgin Galactic it’s at SpaceX, from Elon Musk. All of them, however, bet on rockets instead of balloons.
On Blue Origin, Bezos recently announced that it will travel to space next July 20 with her brother. This will be the company’s first manned mission and had the third passenger decided in a multi-million dollar auction.
However, after 14 test flights were successful, Blue Origin is expected to release the first prices for an off-planet trip soon. The expectation is that the values are double the US$ 125,000 for the Space Perspective balloon.
Virgin Galactic has not yet indicated when it will start marketing space tourism. As of May this year, three tests have been carried out on the VSS Unity spacecraft. The last one reached the mark of 89 kilometers in altitude, close to the highest mark reached in 2019, when it reached 90 kilometers.
In spite of that, it is important to point out that the height of the flights of the two companies is different from the height that the balloon will rise. While the Spaceship Neptune will reach about 30 kilometers, the rocket climbs will reach the Kármán’s line (100 kilometers), which marks the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
But from that altitude, you can already see the curvature of the Earth and the true color of deep space. For many people, it’s enough to call “space”.
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