Luxury Balloon Trips to Space
Space Balloons For a Leisurely Space Visit
Space Trip With No Rockets & No Rocket Fuel
Space Perspective, a human space flight company based in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is offering a unique space adventure. Luxury balloon trips to 20 miles above the Earth into the stratosphere. There are no rockets and no rocket fuel involved. The company says it is a safer and smoother way to experience the edges of space. In fact, the approach is completely different from a rocket flight. The space craft takes off at a leisurely pace of 12 mph. A huge hot air balloon gently carries the passenger capsule aloft into the upper atmosphere and then gently returns it for a splashdown in the ocean, according to the company.
Passenger Tickets to Space
Space Perspective has started selling tickets for the first trip in late 2024 aboard the Spaceship Neptune. It's a hot air balloon type space vehicle that gets lift from hydrogen. The company is taking $1,000 deposits for the $125,000 per seat trip. They plan 25 flights in the first year of operation.
Luxury Space Ride
The capsule is 700 feet tall and the balloon that lifts it is the size of a football stadium. Spaceship Neptune can carry 8 passengers and does have a captain onboard. The ascension into space is a leisurely one and lasts six hours. The capsule is a luxurious suite with plush chairs, 450 mile, 360 degree views, panoramic windows, Wifi and other amenities. Passengers do not need special training because the vehicle does not enter zero gravity conditions. Take off is from a pad at the Kennedy Space Center. To return from the edges of space, the balloon gently starts to deflate and the capsule lands in the ocean. A boat with sophisticated tracking equipment retrieves the capsule and ferries the passengers back to shore. The system is reusable and has been successfully tested. It reached 20 miles above the Earth and safely splashed down on return. It captured the image below with its cameras.
Crowded Spaces
Aerospace entrepreneurs Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum founded Space Perspective in 2019. They join several major players in the space tourism business including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. His aerospace company Blue Origin just auctioned off one seat aboard its New Shepherd spacecraft for $28 million. Bezos plans to be onboard New Shepherd on its 1st crewed flight this summer. And, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is expected to start ferrying passengers to space in early 2022. The cost per seat is more than $250,000. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX has sold tickets for a private, ten day space trip to the International Space Station for later this year at a price of $55 million each. Clearly, Space Perspective is taking a different, more leisurely, less expensive approach to space travel. Space tourism is expected to be a $3 billion industry by 2030.
For a series of executive briefings and great pictures on space wonders and missions, go to https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B08D7SV3Z5&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_J5Z0PSFERG3FH4CYQ59J
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