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How much is a ticket to space $100,000 if you can wait a decade—but here’s how to pay nothing.

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The interior of the Blue Origin capsule, which can hold six people.

How much does a ticket to space cost? That depends on who you book with, how you want to get there and whether you get lucky or not.

On the day that billionaire Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos goes to space it’s worth knowing that a ticket to reach space can cost as much as $55 million for a “proper” orbital flight and a visit to the International Space Station (ISS)—and as little as nothing at all. 

Can you really get to space for free? Sure you can, by entering a competition to win Virgin Galactic tickets via Omaze.com . As space tourism flights on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic get scheduled, likely in 2022, look out for more competitions. 

In an article on the MoneyTransfers.com website an expert predicts that sub-orbital space travel—like that of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic—could cost around $100,000 within a decade.

Space tourism is an industry previously predicted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch as one that could grow to $2.7 trillion in 30 years.

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The distinction between sub-orbital and orbital space tourism is key. While sub-orbital “up and down” missions in supersonic planes and rockets—such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin—orbital missions are much longer and much pricer. 

The private 10-day Axiom Mission 1 including an 8-day stay at the ISS, planned for January 2022, is costing each of the four private astronauts a whopping $55 million for a seat in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

That makes the $28 million paid to Blue Origin during an auction for a seat on the first 11-minute sub-orbital flight—a seat that will now be used by an 18-year old from The Netherlands —appear vastly over the odds. 

Although “space for all” is a phrase often heard from space tourism industry, demand for the first batch of flights is likely to be huge, leading to big asking prices. It’s rumoured that Blue Origin could ask $500,000 , though prices aren’t yet known.

The same goes for Virgin Galactic, which plans to begin private flights to space during 2022. It charged $250,000 for tickets until it paused ticket sales a few years ago. While it has said it wants to charge $40,000, that’s in the long term. 

The most affordable way to pay to get to space would be appear to be via a company called Space Perspective, which plans to launch a pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance space balloon.

In a six-hour flight costing $125,000 per person, passengers in Spaceship Neptune and Neptune One will lift-off from Space Coast Spaceport in Florida, though not until 2024. 

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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What will space tourists get when they fly with SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic? Spacesuits, sleeping bags ... and Jeff Bezos

• Virgin Galactic's $250,000 ticket to the edge of space includes a spacesuit.
• Passengers paying $55 million for SpaceX's mission to the ISS get sleeping bags, hygiene products.
• Blue Origin's $28 million spaceflight comes with a seat next to Jeff Bezos.
• See more stories on Insider's business page .

The era of space tourism has dawned.

Richard Branson  is scheduled to blast off in Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity on Sunday for the company's first fully-crewed rocket-powered test flight .

If the launch goes ahead as planned, he'll be 9 days ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who plans to travel to the edge of space on July 20 in Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft.

Meanwhile, SpaceX's private mission with Axiom Space is scheduled to fly four passengers to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2022.

Read more: As Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson blast off, here are 11 of the most exciting space startups according to VCs

The journeys certainly aren't cheap. Trips aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity will cost passengers $250,000 apiece. A seat on Blue Origin's New Shepard craft was auctioned off at $28 million in June. And the four passengers traveling to the ISS on SpaceX's Crew Dragon will pay a cool $55 million a head.

The question is, what bang will they get for their buck?

SpaceX and Axiom

A ticket for Axiom's mission to the ISS will include:

• Mission planning
• Life support
• Medical support
• Crew provisions
• Eight days aboard the ISS

Staying on the ISS costs the astronauts about $6.8 million a day, NASA told The Verge in January.

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According to NASA's 2021 price list , it should cost $2,000 per crew member per day for food and drinks aboard the ISS. It'll also cost each person as much as $1,500 per day   for things like clothing, hygiene products, office supplies, and sleeping bags.

Blue Origin

The unnamed winner of Blue Origin's auction will accompany Jeff Bezos and his brother on an 11-minute trip on the New Shepard craft. For their $28 million they will be getting:

• On-site accommodation

Blue Origin hasn't yet disclosed commercial seat prices for flights on New Shepard.

Before stepping aboard, passengers must show they can deal with heights, walk on uneven surfaces, and support up to three times their weight, Insider previously reported.

"There are a couple days of training in advance of the flight," a Blue Origin spokesperson told Insider in June. "Some of the training includes learning procedures for getting into and out of the capsule, a mission simulation, and learning techniques for how to move around in zero-g."

Virgin Galactic

Around 600 customers across 58 countries have already forked out up to $250,000  for a seat on Virgin Galactic's Unity spacecraft, which will take them to the edge of space.

A spokesperson from Virgin Galactic told Insider that the ticket includes:

• A spacesuit

Unlike Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, Unity won't pass the Kármán line, an imaginary boundary between the atmosphere and space. When Virgin Galactic's Unity reaches this height, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness before the spacecraft returns to Earth.

Branson, 70, has gone through months of training in preparation for his flight, which is scheduled for July 11.

Watch: How SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic plan on taking you to space

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William Shatner was beamed up into space on Wednesday morning, along with three other passengers, as part of Blue Origin’s second launch into space with tourists. 

Shatner, who returned with the crew after an 11-minute flight on the New Shepard, became the oldest person to go into space at age 90. 

The highly publicized event marks an aggressive push from some companies to enter the realm of commercial space travel. Blue Origin auctioned off a seat on its first spaceflight, which took place back in July and included billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, for $28 million . 

Bezos said that the company has sold $100 million in tickets for future flights. Back in 2018, Reuters said that Bezos had planned to charge between $200,000 to $300,000 per ticket for a spaceflight. 

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic said it’s reopened ticket sales for flights a t $450,000 a pop. The spaceflight company, whose billionaire founder Richard Branson also ventured into space in July, has ambitions to open commercial flights next year. 

“As we endeavour to bring the wonder of space to a broad global population, we are delighted to open the door to an entirely new industry and consumer experience,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement. 

The company previously sold tickets for $250,000 each in anticipation for future flights, but suspended sales in 2014 after a test flight crash.

Axiom Space, a private aerospace company that wants to build the first commercial space station, is planning to send private citizens to the International Space Station in 2022 aboard the Crew Dragon from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Tickets sold for a whopping $55 million each. Back in 2019, NASA opened up the ISS to private flights. 

The market for space tourism 

The focus on space flight reflects a broader shift in who the tourism market now caters to. 

As the ranks of very wealthy individuals have grown, the middle-class has been priced out of the market, which now focuses more on “exotic luxury,” said Howard McCurdy, a professor of public affairs at American University.

He said, for example, experiences might now consist of taking a trip through the Drake Passage to Antarctica, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

“That’s pretty expensive,” McCurdy said. “ It’s not there for everybody, but it is there for a substantial number of people who didn’t exist 40 to 50 years ago in that income category.” 

Mark Sundahl, a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law with expertise in space law, said he sees space tourism as a viable industry.  

“There’s been a lot of interest and a large number of deposits made by prospective spaceflight participants, as they’re known in the industry, and it’s going to be very popular,” Sundahl said. 

But while the rich will be able to afford these tickets, some don’t think space tourism will ever become a mass market opportunity. 

“Projections of price and access to space going way back have always been very optimistic. And it’s still very expensive,” said Henry R. Hertzfeld, a professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University. “Space is risky — it’s not as easy as it looks when everything goes right.” 

The economics of private space companies

McCurdy said he does not think companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic can make money solely flying passengers. To succeed, they’ll have to find other revenue streams. 

He pointed to the Air Mail Act of 1925, or the Kelly Act, which allowed private companies to bid for contracts to deliver the mail , which helped financially sustain their operations. 

To finance his Blue Origin operation, Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year. The company has also partnered with NASA to carry research and technology payloads into space.  

In 2020, NASA bega accepting proposals from scientists who wanted to fly with their experiments to space on commercial rockets from companies such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. It offered between $450,00 to $650,000 for their proposals, reported The Verge.  

And just last month, NASA awarded $146 million in contracts to five companies, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, to create lander design concepts for its Artemis program (which aims to return astronauts to the moon) and conduct component tests. 

“You get the mail, you get some packages, you get some people, and all of a sudden, it starts to make economic sense,” McCurdy said. “And then of course, you charge the people wildly different rates. To be first, to be with Shatner.” 

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How much does space travel cost?

Spaceflight has traditionally been a government-led activity — and it's never been cheap. But the stratospheric cost of putting people and payloads into space is finally starting to fall, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX and other private spaceflight companies.

Here’s a look at what it costs to go to space, whether it’s another satellite that needs to be placed in orbit or an adventurous billionaire looking for a joyride around the moon .

Sending up a satellite

Using its 230-foot-tall Falcon 9, SpaceX charges $62 million to send into orbit commercial satellites weighing up to 50,000 pounds. The closest American competitor is the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, which starts at $73 million for a 41,000-pound payload .

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Those are just starting prices; government agencies typically pay more for a long list of extra services. The Air Force, for example, is paying SpaceX $96.5 million to launch a GPS satellite in 2019 .

Flying to the International Space Station

Since NASA mothballed its space shuttles in 2011, NASA has relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the ISS. Russia has been steadily raising the price of Soyuz seats, reaching $82 million each in 2015. The agency last purchased Soyuz seats for $75 million apiece in 2017.

NASA hopes to end its reliance on Russia in 2019, when SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner capsules begin “taxi” flights to the ISS. Seats on those spacecraft are expected to cost about $58 million .

How much would I have to pay for a flight into space?

Depending on where you're going, a ticket could set you back anywhere from $250,000 to tens of millions of dollars.

If you're looking simply to cross the 62-mile-high Karman line that marks the boundary between the upper atmosphere and outer space, Virgin Galactic says it will take you there for $250,000. The company says about 650 people already have tickets for the suborbital flights, to be made aboard a winged vehicle called SpaceShipTwo. A date for customer flights has yet to be announced.

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, plans something similar — sending space tourists on brief suborbital flights using its New Shepard rocket system. The company has yet to set ticket prices or say when paid flights might begin.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin passengers will join the fewer than a dozen private citizens who have funded their own trips into space. From 2001 to 2009, the Vienna, Virginia-based firm Space Adventures worked with Russia’s space agency to send eight people to the ISS on flights lasting 10 or more days.

Space A colossal elevator to space could be going up sooner than you ever imagined

The world's first private astronaut, a wealthy American engineer named Dennis Tito, reportedly paid $20 million to spend eight days in space in 2001. More recently, Guy Laliberté, the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, shelled out $35 million for an ISS trip in 2009 . Space Adventures still advertises Soyuz flights and plans to start booking trips to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner.

In September 2018, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would ride the company’s yet-to-be-built Big Falcon Rocket on a trip around the moon. Neither Musk nor Maezawa, who said he would take along seven artists, would discuss the mission’s cost.

What about other rockets?

Small satellites may qualify for a free ride to space through NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program, which helps universities and research groups fly standardized satellites called CubeSats aboard rockets as secondary payloads.

If your satellite can’t hitch a free ride, you can book a NASA sounding rocket to the edge of space for as little as $1 million . For orbital flights of payloads weighing less than 500 pounds, Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab offers launches of its Electron rocket from New Zealand for about $5 million .

From there, the price goes up steeply. Northrop Grumman's Pegasus rocket, which is air-launched from the belly of a jumbo jet, can place 1,000 pounds in orbit for about $40 million . Stratolaunch, a new venture bankrolled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, plans to launch Pegasus rockets from its own colossal airplane before offering an expanded line of rockets capable of carrying up to 13,000 pounds. The company has yet to disclose prices.

NASA is developing its Space Launch System, which will carry astronauts to the moon and Mars. The rocket’s per-launch cost has not been disclosed, but the agency now spends at least $2 billion per year on the project. The maiden flight isn’t expected until 2020.

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How much does a trip into space cost?

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To boldly go on vacation

Summer is about to come into view, and along with it, the hordes of luggage-laden minivans heading for the great American vacation. There will be plane flights and train rides, Mount Rushmore visits and Grand Canyon views. It might not be long, though, before we’re all considering a type of trip that Clark W. Griswold would never have attempted: a voyage straight up into space to marvel at the Earth from afar and gaze at the stars like never before.

Space tourism is expected to “take off” in the next decade, with the Federal Aviation Administration predicting it to blossom into a billion-dollar industry in that time.

It’s not all that difficult to imagine, given the technological progression and increasing accessibility since man’s first “timid penetration beyond the confines of the atmosphere,” as cosmonautic patriarch Konstantin Tsiolkovsky forebode a century ago.

The Jetsons’ concept of every average George and Jane scooting around in private saucers was probably inevitable from the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. What followed were decades of space-based machismo between Russia and the United States, one incredible moon landing and a bevy of science fiction that almost made space tourism passe. Almost.

Friends in high places

That all changed in 2001 when Dennis Tito decided he wanted to play Neil Armstrong for a few days — tagging along on a trip to the International Space Station. Creator of the Wilshire aggregate market index, Tito shelled out $20 million for the privilege of becoming the first space tourist, spending nearly eight days in space — to the reported chagrin of the actual astronauts involved in the mission who felt he needed more training.

Tito was also the first space tourist client of Space Adventures, which currently is the only company to have sold spaceflights to individuals that have been realized.

“Collectively, our clients have spent over three months in space, traveling over 36 million miles,” says Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures.

The company offers a wide range of astonishing — and pricey — out-of-this-world experiences that would’ve seemed like fantasy to every nonastronaut (or cosmonaut) at the turn of the century.

Thanks to Space Adventures, you could be the eighth space tourist to orbit the Earth or to dock at the International Space Station. The price tag for such a trip now? Approximately $50 million. What’s more, you’ll probably be put to work with some sort of experiment while you’re up there, so don’t expect there to be any zero-gravity spa treatments included in your pricey package.

The most expensive walk you’ll ever take

Since you already wrote a check equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small country to see the Earth as so few have seen it, you may as well go all out. For another $15 million, you can stay on the International Space Station for five days to be trained and certified for an “Extravehicular Activity,” otherwise called a spacewalk. For 90 minutes, you will be out in the nothingness of space, realizing exactly how small you really are. You also may be given some menial task to make you feel important and take your mind off of the thought that you’re only one “everything going terribly wrong” away from drifting off helplessly into deep space.

If this still isn’t enough for you and you’ve just won Mega Millions, inquire about Space Adventure’s mission planned for 2017. It might sound like fiction, but they’re planning a circumlunar flight that will be the first human trip to the moon since 1972. As a bonus, you’ll get to do the Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks trick of hiding the Earth and “everything you’ve ever known” under your thumb from 240,000 miles away. The mission provides space for two commercial passengers at a price of $300 million, which is shocking in and of itself until you hear that someone has already reserved one of the seats. We’re going to guess they probably also called “shotgun.”

Space on a budget

Not every trip into space requires an eight-figure financial hemorrhage. One can still experience the wonders of weightlessness and looking out into black space and bright stars at a fraction of the price. Well, as long as you keep in mind how large the figure is we’re taking a fraction of.

Space Adventure’s subsidiary, Zero Gravity, offers what most people would consider the most horrifying plane ride of their life. And more than 7,000 people have paid about $5,000 to take this fear-inducing plunge. A modified Boeing 727 climbs at a 45 degree angle to 34,000 feet before reversing course and hurtling toward the ground. Each “parabola” provides about 30 seconds of weightlessness.

To “slip the surly bonds of Earth” and truly experience space comes with the next price bracket up. Space Adventures has partnered with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital spaceflights at a price of $102,000 per ticket, with more than 200 tickets already reserved.

XCOR Aerospace, based in the Mojave Desert in California, is yet another space vacation company. It offers a 30-minute flight at 330,000 feet on its Lynx ship at a cost of $95,000, including a $20,000 deposit. The company gave away a free ticket in February, only to find out he is a NASA scientist and may be unable to accept. That’s one major suborbital tease.

Who’s going to space?

Who can forget the image of Lance Bass posing like he’s going to the astronaut prom? Though his push to reach space fell short, plenty of other celebrities are lining up to reach the stars.

One of the more marketed space tourism projects is Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, while currently in testing, may begin suborbital flights in 2013. Last month, Ashton Kutcher became the 500th passenger to sign up for the voyage. The price tag is $200,000 per seat, including a $20,000 deposit. Tom Hanks, Paris Hilton, Katy Perry and Angelina Jolie are reported to have tickets as well.

“We have a very diverse set of customers,” says Sean Wilson, who is with a firm that represents Virgin Galactic. “Some are famous, most are not; some are very wealthy, some are not.”

Public interest is just beginning to gain momentum as more spaceflight firms move closer to realizing their objectives.

“Clients from all walks of life are interested in Virgin Galactic, but at this stage there are not as many people with serious interest and the financial resources to purchase the flight,” says Jennifer Campbell, an owner of Explorations, a luxury travel company that offers flights aboard Virgin Galactic. “For many of the baby boomers that inquire, their interest with space began in the ’60s with Neil Armstrong and moon landings. They grew up with the promise of space travel.”

Sticker shock?

A bulk of what makes up the exorbitant price for commercial spaceflight is wrapped up in the research and development of the still-young commercial industry. It’s one of the rare instances when it is, in fact, rocket science. A launch needed for space flight requires an incredible amount of costly energy and precision.

“The price will always be expensive, but it will reduce in time when more vehicle manufacturers are launching their spacecraft and it’s a competitive environment,” Shelley says.

Wilson says he sees the company’s spaceflight prices possibly moving below $100,000 within the next decade.

“Our aspiration is definitely to bring the price down,” he says. “Historical analogies show that this is likely to happen. Financial success should encourage competition, economies of scale and new technologies, which should all exert a downward pressure on the end price.”

It may never be as cheap as booking a first-class ticket on a transatlantic flight, but the falling price of spaceflight may mean more dreams can come true.

“We know what a life-changing experience seeing the Earth from space is,” Wilson says. “To be able to offer that to individuals from all walks of life and from every country for the very first time is amazing.”

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What will it cost to fly Virgin Galactic to space?

A short suborbital jaunt to the edge of space for most people requires having a lot of spare cash on hand, for now.

By Neil Vigdor and Kenneth Chang

• Published July 11, 2021 Updated Sept. 15, 2021

Not long after Richard Branson re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday, he and other employees of his Virgin Galactic venture boasted that the company would greatly expand opportunities for the general public to travel to space. For the moment, those otherworldly views and feelings of weightlessness will still be held in rarefied air.

A seat on one of the company’s spaceships originally cost $200,000 . The company later raised the price to $250,000 . It then stopped sales after a crash during a test flight in 2014. When the company resumes sales later this year, the price will probably rise again, said Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive.

“We’re here to make space more accessible to all,” Mr. Branson said on Sunday as he was presented with his astronaut wings after his milestone flight.

For a vast majority of Americans, the cost of such a trip is out of reach. In the future, Virgin Galactic and other spaceflight companies hope broadening opportunities to fly to space will bring down the cost of a ticket. But for now, primarily people with spare cash equivalent to the cost of some houses will be able to afford a few moments at the edge of space.

Nevertheless, the company estimated on Sunday that more than 600 people from some 60 countries had signed up for one of its flights. The first paying SpaceShipTwo passengers may begin flying in the next year, after the company completes two more test flights.

During Virgin Galactic’s livestream on Sunday, some space tourists-in-waiting spoke about how they were looking forward to taking the flights. They had been invited to watch Mr. Branson’s flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico. There was no discussion of the steep cost associated with space travel, which is not limited to Virgin Galactic.

An unnamed passenger paid $28 million to join the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos later this month when his rocket company, Blue Origin, is to launch its New Shepard rocket and capsule. The company has yet to announce the standard fare for a trip on its spacecraft when Mr. Bezos isn’t in the next seat.

While the price of a brief suborbital trip with Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin is expensive, trips even higher to orbit and beyond are downright, well, astronomical.

Three people paid $55 million each to Axiom Space in Houston to fly in SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon to the International Space Station as soon as early next year.

But not all trajectories to space will involve six or seven figures. On Sunday, Mr. Branson announced that Virgin Galactic would give away two tickets to space as part of a sweepstakes initiative with the charitable fund-raising platform Omaze.

No donation is required to win, according to Omaze, which said that a nonprofit organization, Space for Humanity, would seek to “democratize space and send citizen astronauts of diverse racial, economic and disciplinary backgrounds to space.”

“If you ever had a dream, now is the time to make it come true,” Mr. Branson said.

Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter. He previously covered Connecticut politics for The Hartford Courant. More about Neil Vigdor

Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. More about Kenneth Chang

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Space Tourism: How Much Does it Cost & Who's Offering It?

Last Updated: December 17, 2022

Many of us dream of going to space and over 600 people have traveled to space as astronauts in government-funded agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos. But how much does spaceflight cost in today and how is that expected to change in the coming years? 

With new advancements in spaceflight technology, the costs of space travel are decreasing, making the dream of spaceflight a little closer for us all.

Evolution of Spaceflight Costs and Technologies

During the space race, the cost of sending something into space averaged between $6,000 to over $25,000 per kg of weight not adjusted for inflation and NASA spent $28 billion to land astronauts on the moon, about $288 billion in today’s dollars.

In recent decades, it has averaged around $10,000 per kg though certain missions have been higher due to other factors including the destination, the size of the rocket, the amount of fuel needed, and the cost of fuel. 

After the retirement of the space shuttle program, NASA paid Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS at about $80 million per seat on the Soyuz rocket. NASA’s biggest and newest rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System) which is currently being utilized for the new moon missions including Artemis and Orion, currently costs about $2-4 billion per launch.

But recent years and the addition of private space companies have drastically changed the game. NASA allowed private space companies to develop equipment for missions, including a 2006 partnership with SpaceX under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to provide resupply for crew and cargo demonstration contracts to the International Space Station (ISS). 

This partnership has continued to flourish over the years with SpaceX successfully launching two NASA astronauts in May 2020 on a Crew Dragon Spacecraft, making SpaceX the first private company to send astronauts to the ISS and the first crewed orbital launch from American soil in 9 years.

With the revolutionary technology of reusable boosters from SpaceX, the cost has plummeted, achieving less than $1,600 per kg with the Falcon Heavy (still totaling more than $100 million per launch) and even a projected cost of under a thousand for their next generation model Star Ship.

 These recent innovations are even making SLS the more expensive, less efficient option if SpaceX’s projections continue to progress as expected within margins of error. We shall see how NASA plans to adapt goals in light of this.

The Falcon Heavy is a cost-effective option for launching payloads into space.

The rise of private space companies

With private space companies, the opportunity for civilians to book a trip to space similar to booking a flight came closer to reality. Dennis Tito was the first private citizen to pay for a trip to space with a trip to the ISS from April 28th to May 6th, 2001 for $20 million dollars. Tito purchased his experience through Space Adventures Inc. which was founded in 1998 and offers a variety of different space experiences. They even acquired Zero Gravity Corporation, NASA’s provider of Reduced Gravity Training (not in space) for its astronauts, in 2008. They offer similar experiences for private individuals starting at about $8,200 as of this publishing (December 2022).

Space Adventures sent seven other space tourists to the ISS through 2009, but due to a number of factors, Space Adventures had to put their ISS offerings on hold until 2021 when they were able to purchase two Soyuz seats due to NASA moving their contract to SpaceX. Space Adventures sent two people to the ISS via the Roscosmos Soyuz rocket in December 2021 and is working on expanding its offerings.

In addition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, there are a number of other private space companies getting into the commercial spaceflight/ space tourism market, most notably Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins.

Flight Providers & Rates

What are the current rates for commercial spaceflight tickets? What commercial spaceflight trips have already happened? All prices are per person/ per seat.

SpaceX has had the most experience in sending humans to space thanks to its partnership with NASA and Musk has made it clear that he wants to make space travel an option for the public. To date, SpaceX has offered two commercial spaceflight options and has one big one planned for the future:

• SpaceX completed a Multi-Day Orbital Voyage, the first of their new plan to offer private astronaut experiences through their NASA partnership.  
• Estimated $55 million for a 3-day stay inside a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule orbiting the Earth at 357 miles (574 km) with three crewmates, sponsored by billionaire Jared Isaacman to raise money for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital
• Partnership between SpaceX and Houston-based Axiom Space Inc.
• $55 million for a 10-day trip to ISS at 408 km with a weeklong (8-day) stay in the orbital lab. 
• Expected to continue in 2023
• Axiom plans to build a stand-alone space station to replace the ISS with the first module expected to launch in 2024.
• Steve Aoki: American DJ and record producer
• Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd: American science communicator, content creator, photographer, and musician
• Yemi A.D.: Czech choreographer, art director and performer
• Rhiannon Adam: Irish photographer
• Karim Iliya: British photographer and filmmaker
• Brendan Hall: American filmmaker and photographer
• Dev Joshi: Indian television actor
• Choi Seung-hyun (stage name: T.O.P.): South Korean rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor
• Cost is unknown, likely a minimum of $500 million

2. Blue Origin

Blue Origin: currently offers a 100km 12-minute ride to the Karman Line, the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space; pricing is still unclear and dependent on a variety of factors 

• On July 2021, Jeff and Mark Bezos went into space on the New Shepard rocket with Oliver Daemen (who won the trip through an auction bid of around 28 million) and honored guest Wally Funk (a member of Mercury 13, the private program in which women trained to be astronauts but ultimately never went to space)
• Blue Origin has completed 6 commercial space flights as of this publishing. Some “honorable guests” have been invited free of charge, such as Funk and actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek). Some have been sponsored or have received special deals due to their nonprofit status.
• $28 million winning auction bid for the first flight ( $19 million was donated)
• $1 million for a board member of a nonprofit
• About $1.25 for a Dude Perfect comedy group crew member, hosted by MoonDAO in August 2022

3. Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride

Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride: $450,000 for a 90-minute ride to suborbital space 50km above sea level 

• In July 2021, founder Richard Branson flew to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere with two pilots and three other Virgin Galactic employees as the first test of commercial spaceflight for the company
• Each VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo carries up to four passengers
• Expected flights are currently anticipated to begin in 2023 
• Includes training accommodations and amenities; launches from New Mexico

4. Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip

Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip: $50-60million for a 12-day trip to the ISS at 408 km

• In October 2021 an actress and director shot scenes for the first movie filmed in space
• December 2021 Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano for two days (same billionaire planning to go to the moon with SpaceX)
• With the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, this option is effectively nonexistent currently

5. Space Perspective

Space Perspective: a six-hour balloon ride to space/ the stratosphere on their “Spaceship Neptune” at $125,000

• Rides are currently scheduled to begin by the end of 2024. 
• A pressurized capsule will be slowly lifted by a football-field-sized hydrogen-filled balloon 19 miles (30 km) into the stratosphere, about 3 times the altitude of commercial planes. 
• The passenger cabin features a bar, bathroom, and windows for sightseeing and is expected to carry 8 passengers and 1 pilot per trip.

6. Aurora Space Station (no longer in development)

Aurora Space Station was supposed to be the world’s first luxury space hotel, offering a 12-day stay for $9.5 million allowing them to free float, observe space and earth, practice hydroponics and play in a hologram deck, but they shut down operations and refunded all deposits in March 2021. They received a lot of media attention and therefore are noted here due to that notoriety.

Conclusion: the current cost of flying to space

Currently, it is only available to those who can spend an average of $250,000 to $500,000 for suborbital trips (about a fifteen-minute ride to the edge of space and back) or flights to actual orbit at more than $50 million per seat (though typically a longer trip than 15 minutes).

It could be free/ discounted if you can find a sponsor, often for nonprofit/ charity purposes, or if you are someone of notoriety that can help spread the company’s mission. 

Waitlists are available for most offerings, with a deposit, with many stretching years into the future, which might end up helping you have a spot at a more reasonable price in the future if you can save up.

Many companies are looking to provide extended stay options on private space stations in the future, similar to how you might book a flight somewhere and stay in a hotel for a few days. Again, for the immediate future, this is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. The biggest portion of the cost would be launching them, though it is still estimated that a couple million dollars will be needed to cover the expenses of your stay while you are on the space station, whether that is included in the ticket price or added on top of that.

Many companies are hopeful they can eventually price a trip to space down to $100,000 but that will likely take some time, even with the cost-saving measures of reusable boosters. Many forms of recent technology have evolved exponentially in recent years and with dropping price rates as well. Just as plane travel was originally prohibitively expensive, but has now become fairly reasonable for the average consumer, the hope is that the same will eventually happen with space tourism, but we will have to see how long that takes. 

While the possibility of going to space is still out of reach for many of us, hopefully, the advancements in recent years and those yet to come will help to continually lower the costs of going to space, just as has occurred in many other fields. This author, for one, truly hopes that the interest of the elite who are currently able to participate in these offerings will spur research and development, not just of space tourism but space exploration in general, to help fuel a quicker journey to space access for all

Written by Sarah Hoffschwelle

Sarah Hoffschwelle is a freelance writer who covers a combination of topics including astronomy, general science and STEM, self-development, art, and societal commentary. In the past, Sarah worked in educational nonprofits providing free-choice learning experiences for audiences ages 2-99. As a lifelong space nerd, she loves sharing the universe with others through her words. She currently writes on Medium at  https://medium.com/@sarah-marie  and authors self-help and children’s books.

Wow! There's more to read 🚀

This page is part of our collection of articles about astronauts . If you enjoyed the read, then you’ll love the following articles.

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What are the different types of astronauts suit?

How do astronauts train for zero-gravity environments?

How Much Does it Cost to Travel to Space?

Fast facts: 

• As of right now (2021), the cost of booking a trip to space in the near future is approximately $250,000 .
• The immediate cost of a trip to space (via something like SpaceX) in the next 2-3 years is in the tens of millions per passenger .
• In the medium-future, the cost of individual tickets into space will drastically fall in price.
• Based on estimations, it is likely that the cost of space tourism tickets will be around $10,000 – $25,000 within the next twenty years .

How much will it cost for a private citizen to travel to space?

Since the Champion Traveler research team is heavily focused on private travel (as opposed to how much it costs astronauts to fly to space), all data used in this article will be based on the idea of privatized space tourism. This industry is expected to hit a major milestone in the 2020s, and it is likely that space tourism will become not only more common but more affordable within the next twenty to fifty years.

As of right now, based on early estimations from several major private space exploration companies (SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic), the first privatized space travel will cost adventurous travelers somewhere around $250,000 for a short trip into Earth’s orbit. This quarter of a million dollar price tag for private space tourism will likely include somewhere between a few hours and a few days orbiting the Earth.

This type of space travel will remain expensive for several years, but as all things improve and become more efficient within the process, the cost will very likely start to decrease within a matter of years. There is likely a heavier price tag on the first couple of trips simply because of the historic nature of them. As market demand balances out and more space tourism is available, it seems likely the cost of a ticket for a short adventure into space will be somewhere around $10,000 to $25,000 depending on the length of the trip and the number of passengers included on each flight.

When will space travel become more affordable?

As of right now (2021), space travel is more likely a pipe dream for many than a realistic vacation. A quarter of a million dollars for one trip into outer space is likely not something many people will be able to afford in the short term. But as costs drop and space tourism becomes more efficient (and likely sees more competition), ticket prices for space travel will fall back down to Earth.

As for how long this will take, within 20 years (by about the year 2040), space travel should see a gradual decrease in price to somewhere in the $10,000 – $25,000 range (in 2021 dollars) where it will likely flat line for a while based on current cost estimations of scale, fuel costs, production costs, and regulation.

It is possible that we will see privatized space tourism drop down to somewhere in the $5,000 – $10,000 range as well if more competition enters the market if demand stays high.

Will space travel ever be cheaper than air travel?

The problem with comparing space travel to the current price of air travel is that the current market for air travel remains in high demand for both tourism and business purposes.

In the medium term, the only purpose that space travel as tourism will serve is for quick trips into space and back. There won’t be necessarily, at least in the foreseeable future, a spike in travel demand for business purposes and thus the overall market demand for space tourism will remain relatively small.

Because of this, it is very unlikely that we will ever see space tourism anywhere near comparable flights for something like a transatlantic flight to Europe from the United states for $500-700.

When will space travel be available to more people?

Based on current development of spaceships capable of carrying a larger number of private citizens, we expect that by the 2030s it will be possible to book a ticket via one of the current major space exploration brands (SpaceX, Blue Origin), and that we also will likely see between two and five new companies enter the market in that time.

With a growing number of companies producing spacecraft capable of allowing for space tourism, there will likely be hundreds of available seats in a given year within the next decade, and thousands of available seats a year after that.

Is space tourism safe?

This is something nobody has enough of a firm grasp on to say definitively one way or the other just yet, but it seems fair to assume given how long it has taken to commercialized space travel, that the early flights will take every precaution possible.

It’s fully reasonable to expect that over the course of space tourism expansion there will be accidents and likely death, but at the same time, the same can still be said about traditional air travel. While statistically considered extremely safe, there will always be a minimal amount of risk associated with any type of travel.

What companies offer private space travel?

There are many now-defunct companies who have tried to establish footing in space tourism, but as of now there seem to be three main companies we will be watching closely when it comes to offering one of the grandest possible adventures for private citizens:

• SpaceX – Led by Elon Musk, this company seems the most likely to begin ramping up space tourism within the next two decades. They have a planned launch for their first space tourists in the coming two years.
• Virgin Galactic – Led by Richard Branson, this company has been around the longest (of the surviving companies), but has yet to launch their first commercial space tourists into space.
• Blue Origin – Led by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has focused mostly on commercial space travel, but has also discussed expanding their efforts into personal space travel in the near future.

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How much does a ticket to space cost? Meet the people ready to fly.

After years of waiting, virgin galactic is close to flying tourists to the edge of space, but it will cost $250,000..

When Lori Fraleigh unwrapped the present her husband had given her for her 38th birthday, she found a curious surprise: a model of a spaceship. It was cool, sure, but a toy would be better suited for her young children, then 5 and 1, not her.

Then she noticed the ticket. It took Fraleigh, a Silicon Valley executive, a moment to realize what her husband had purchased for her: a trip to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. “I went through a lot of crazy emotions, like, ‘Did you really buy this?’ ” she recalled of the moment in 2011. “ ‘Do we still have enough money to remodel the kitchen?’ ”

Today, her children are 13 and 9. The kitchen remodel has long since been completed. But Fraleigh is still waiting for her trip to space.

For years, Branson has been pushing a quixotic vision for the future, where his spacecraft would ferry passengers off Earth as frequently as airplanes. But for all the talk about a new Space Age full of citizen astronauts, the journey has been fitful, and filled with setbacks, including the death of a test pilot in 2014 after a harrowing crash.

Virgin Galactic's quest for space

But now, 15 years after Branson founded Virgin Galactic, space tourism could be tantalizingly close to becoming a reality. The company has flown to the edge of space twice and says its first paying customers could reach space next year. Another space venture, Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos almost 20 years ago, hopes to conduct its first test flight with people this year, though it hasn’t announced prices or sold any tickets. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And NASA recently announced that it would allow private citizens to fly to the International Space Station on spacecraft built by SpaceX and Boeing.

Which means that Fraleigh may soon finally get her five minutes of weightlessness, a view that promises to be spectacular and a test to see if she has the right stuff.

Fraleigh has dreamed of being an astronaut since she was a kid and has solid space geek credentials, including having attended Space Camp as a teenager.

What’s it really like to live in space? 50 astronauts share their stories

But she didn’t think she could become a NASA astronaut and instead became a tech executive in Silicon Valley, a career that meant her family could absorb Virgin Galactic’s charge ($200,000 per ticket in 2011) without financial hardship. A mother who spends weekends ferrying her children to soccer, baseball and music lessons, she doesn’t look like a thrill seeker. The most adventurous thing she’s done? Driving a go-cart in college, and “I’ve been on some hikes up in Lake Tahoe that were on the strenuous side.”

Now she’s preparing for a ride in Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, a sleek spaceplane with a rocket motor strong enough to send two pilots and as many as six passengers more than 50 miles high, where the Federal Aviation Administration says the edge of space begins. The spaceship is tethered to the belly of a large, twin-fuselage airplane that carries it to an altitude of about 40,000 feet. Then SpaceShipTwo is released, fires its engine and rockets off through the atmosphere.

For decades, people have dreamed of such adventures. After the Apollo missions, Pan Am started a waiting list for tickets to the moon that by 1971 stretched 90,000 names long. Famed CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite signed up, as did future president Ronald Reagan. Later, in the 1970s and early 1980s, NASA was so convinced that the space shuttle would, as the name implied, offer regular service to Earth orbit that a committee was formed to sort out the sticky problem of how to choose the first private citizens to fly.

For today’s space companies, it’s anyone willing — and wealthy enough — to pay the steep cost.

NASA said it would cost $35,000 a night for stays on the ISS, and the price to get there is estimated to be $50 million. Virgin Galactic has said it may in the short term raise the price of its tickets, which today cost $250,000.

Despite the high costs, Virgin Galactic expects high demand from the wealthy. While it completes the testing phase of the spacecraft this year, the company projects flying 66 paying customers in 2020, more than 700 in 2021 and nearly 1,000 the following year. By 2023, when it expects to fly 1,562 paying passengers on 270 flights, it plans to have nearly $600 million in annual revenue. Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic announced it would go public by merging with a New York investment firm, a move that Branson said would “open space to more investors and in doing so, open space to thousands of new astronauts.”

Already, 600 people have signed up for what Virgin Galactic describes as a transformative experience of seeing Earth from space, what astronauts call the “overview effect.” That’s more people than have been to space since 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

Second thoughts?

Craig Wichner, who runs Farmland LP, an organic farmland investment fund in San Francisco, has been waiting for the opportunity for more than a decade. In 2008, he plunked down several thousand dollars as a deposit to ride on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo with a bunch of friends who thought it’d make a great adventure.

“Who wants to do this with me?” a pal said at the time.

“Yep, I’m there,” Wichner responded.

But it wasn’t just the adventure that attracted Wichner; it was the opportunity to help push humanity out of the atmosphere, he said. Buying a ticket was like casting a vote for Branson’s spacefaring vision of the future — “my way of actually supporting his mission, his dream and helping advance humanity.”

In the years since, the dream has unfurled slowly as Virgin Galactic learned that building a spacecraft was not as easy as initially thought. But the repeated delays had an upside. They allowed Wichner to meet many of the other “future astronauts” who’d signed up with Virgin Galactic, space enthusiasts from 60 countries who now form a sort of exclusive fraternity. They meet occasionally, bonding over the prospect of a wild adventure.

“It was just this wonderful, eclectic mix of people from all around the world,” Wichner said.

Now, as the company gets closer to flying and his number may soon be called, there are other factors to consider. Weighing on Wichner is the realization that spaceflight is dangerous. In 2014, during a test flight, the spacecraft came apart, killing Michael Alsbury, one of the test pilots and a father of two.

Wichner’s reaction to the crash was “a general sadness at the cost.” But he was also inspired by the company’s perseverance, “the unwavering commitment to just keep moving forward,” he said.

Now, however, the opinions of his own children, ages 13 and 8, matter. They’re old enough to understand the consequences of failure.

“Sometimes they’re excited about me going into space, and sometimes they’re scared,” he said. “And so it’s not worth doing if they’re scared.”

NASA’s first ordinary citizen astronauts

NASA’s leaders were convinced that the space shuttle could turn ordinary citizens into astronauts and set about trying to decide which private citizens should go first.

“Space flight belongs to the public; they pay for it,” reads a NASA memo from 1982. “Therefore NASA’s objective has been to maintain the openness of the program and to invite the public to participate to the extent possible. Now a new opportunity has emerged. With the advent of the Shuttle, people need no longer participate vicariously but may participate directly.”

At the time, NASA Administrator James Beggs “was being barraged by people wanting to fly,” said Alan Ladwig, who ran what NASA called its “spaceflight participant program.” “He was getting all these VIPs and reporters calling him and saying they wanted to fly."

The singer John Denver was among those keen to go. He lobbied NASA for a ride, touting that he was an airplane pilot and an amateur astronomer who kept in shape by running four to five miles a day.

“If given the opportunity, I would go tomorrow,” he said at a Senate hearing about flying private citizens on the shuttle.

In 1984, NASA surveyed artists about the prospect of a writer or painter going to space and got this response from Maya Angelou, the award-winning poet, according to a Chicago Tribune article from the time:

“As poets over the centuries concentrated on Grecian urns, nightingales, ravens and romantic love, I am certain that poets in the future will focus on the configuration of planets, stars, weightlessness and the discovery of our universe.”

Ultimately, NASA decided to take people who could communicate the experience to others. First a teacher, then a journalist. NASA leaders “felt astronauts weren’t the greatest storytellers,” Ladwig said. “Some of which was true, some not so true. A lot of them were miffed that people criticized their communication ability.”

But first came a pair of powerful politicians.

Jake Garn, a Republican senator from Utah who headed the appropriations subcommittee that oversaw NASA’s budget, pushed to go, saying it was his obligation to “kick the tires” of NASA’s newest spacecraft. Less than a year later, Bill Nelson, then a Democratic congressman representing the Florida Space Coast, hitched a ride. There were also many non-NASA astronauts known as payload specialists who worked on specific projects in space and often had a particular technical expertise.

The White House, though, was looking forward to the flight of another civilian, Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, who had been selected out of 11,000 applicants to fly on space shuttle Challenger in 1986. And NASA was deep in the process of picking the next civilian to fly — a journalist — when on Jan. 28, 1986, the Challenger’s booster exploded, killing McAuliffe and the other six astronauts on board. The shuttle would stay grounded for more than 2½ years and never achieve the frequency of flight NASA leaders had initially envisioned, averaging fewer than five flights a year.

No journalist ever flew. And the dreams of opening the shuttle to the general public were deferred.

Preparing for flight

While NASA shied away from flying private citizens after the explosion, the private sector kept pursuing it. In 2004, a venture backed by Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, made history when it flew the first private vehicle to the edge of space to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize .

The flights were heralded as a new Space Age, one where the private sector would end the government’s monopoly on space. But while the SpaceShipOne flights were successful, they were also harrowing; in one, the navigation system went awry and the pilot had to fly blind; in another, the spacecraft spun like a top all the way to space.

Worried that someone would die in his spacecraft, Allen sold the rights to the technology to Branson, who set off to build the bigger, more robust SpaceShipTwo. And after the X Prize, Congress took notice, growing concerned over what they saw as dangerously loose regulations governing the industry. Former congressman James Oberstar, of Minnesota, criticized the FAA as having a “tombstone mentality — wait until someone dies, then regulate.”

The industry pushed back, saying burdensome rules would stifle a growing industry just as it was getting started, and, backed by the FAA, was able to keep the regulations relatively lax. So today, space tourism, like bungee jumping or skydiving, is governed under an “informed consent” standard: Passengers acknowledge they understand the considerable risks, and zoom, off they’ll go to space. And to secure a launch license from the FAA, the companies have only to demonstrate how they will protect people and property on the ground in the event of a crash.

Late last year, two pilots flew Branson’s SpaceShipTwo to the edge of space. Though it did not go into orbit, it was the first launch of a spacecraft with humans from U.S. soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011.

Then, in February, Virgin Galactic repeated the feat, this time with a crew member, Beth Moses, whose job is to prepare Virgin’s customers for their rides to space. For her, the trip was “mind-blowing,” as if “the sands of time of your life have stopped for a moment.”

Now that Virgin Galactic is getting closer to flying customers, Moses is starting to prepare them to make sure they get the most from the experience. “The one question I ask every one of our customers long before training is what do you most want to get out of your spaceflight?” she said. Some “want to do somersaults,” others want “a Zen, private experience.” Others are flying “to honor someone. . . . It’s an amazing variety.”

But she knows some will have concerns. Part of her job is to allay them, so participants “arrive ready to savor your space experience,” she said. “If you are concerned about any aspect of the flight, that’s what we’ll walk through and just explain it.”

Dee Chester, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher from Newport Beach, Calif., bought her ticket in 2017, when she came into her inheritance. She said she has no hesitation about going and can’t wait for when her “little nose prints are on every window” of the spacecraft. “I want to do the Superman pose, and look at the Earth and see the very thin bands of the atmosphere. I just hope I’m not crying and miss it all because it’s a big wet blur.”

Now that his day of flying is getting closer, Wichner is getting excited, as well. But he still needs to have the frank conversation with his children, who remain wary.

“It’ll happen naturally, and I think they’ll be fine with me going,” he said.

Until they are, he won’t commit, leaving the future uncertain: “I don’t know that I’m actually going to go.”

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Space is all yours—for a hefty price

Commercial spaceflight is now officially a thing. But is it a transcendent opportunity for the masses, or just another way for rich people to show off?

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Private citizens have been buying their way into the heavens for decades. In the 1980s, McDonnell Douglas engineer Charles Walker became the first nongovernment individual to fly in space when his company bought him a seat on three NASA space shuttle missions. In 2001, American entrepreneur Dennis Tito dished out a reported $20 million to fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) and spend eight days floating in microgravity. 

But beyond those few flights, nothing much happened.

At least not until last year. After decades of development and several serious accidents, three companies—SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic—launched their first tourist flights in 2021. William Shatner rode a Blue Origin vehicle to the edge of space in October. Former NFL star and Good Morning America host Michael Strahan took a similar ride in December. Even NASA, which was once hostile to space tourism, has come around and released a pricing policy for private astronaut missions, offering to bring someone to orbit for around $55 million.

Okay, so it’s a new era—but what does it mean? Do these forays represent a future in which even the average person might book a celestial flight and bask in the splendor of Earth from above? Or is this just another way for the ultrawealthy to flash their cash while simultaneously ignoring and exacerbating our existential problems down on the ground? Nearly all those 2021 escapades were the result of efforts by three billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. Branson is a mere single-digit billionaire, whereas Bezos and Musk have wealth measured in the hundreds of billions. 

“The greatly undue influence of wealth in this country—to me that’s at the heart of my issues with space tourism as it’s unfolding,” says Linda Billings, a communications researcher who consults for NASA and has written about the societal impacts of spaceflight for more than 30 years. “We are so far away from making this available to your so-called average person.”

Each spot on Virgin’s suborbital spaceplane, the cheapest way to space at the moment, will set somebody back $450,000. A single seat on Blue Origin’s initial suborbital launch sold at auction for $28 million, and the undisclosed price tag of SpaceX’s all-civilian Inspiration4 mission, which spent three days in orbit before splashing down off the coast of Florida, has been estimated at $50 million per passenger. 

Not only are such flights ridiculously far out of financial reach for the average person, says Billings, but they aren’t achieving any real goals—far from ideal given our terrestrial problems of inequality, environmental collapse, and a global pandemic. “We’re not really learning anything,” she says. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of thought or conscience in the people engaging in these space tourism missions.”

Laura Forczyk, owner of the space consulting firm Astralytical, thinks it’s misguided to focus strictly on the money aspect. “The narrative [last year] was billionaires in space, but it’s so much more than that,” says Forczyk, who wrote the book Becoming Off-Worldly , published in January, in which she interviewed both government and private astronauts about why they go to space.

Forczyk sees the flights as great opportunities to conduct scientific experiments. All three of the commercial tourist companies have carried research projects in the past, studying things like fluid dynamics, plant genetics, and the human body’s reaction to microgravity. And yes, the rich are the target audience, but the passengers on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 included artist and scientist Sian Proctor and data engineer Chris Sembroski, who won their tickets through contests, as well as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ambassador Hayley Arceneaux (the trip helped her raise $200 million in donations for the hospital). Blue Origin gave free trips to aviation pioneer Wally Funk, who as a woman had been barred from becoming an Apollo astronaut, and NASA astronaut Alan Shepard’s daughter Laura.

Forczyk also cites Iranian space tourist Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the ISS in 2006. “She talked about how she grew up in a war zone in Iran, and how [the flight] helped her see the world as interconnected,” Forczyk says. 

Billings thinks the value of such testimonials is pretty low. “All these people are talking to the press about how wonderful the experience was,” she says. “But to listen to someone else tell you about how exciting it was to climb Mt. Everest doesn’t convey the actual experience.”

As with an Everest trek, there’s the risk of death to consider. Historically, spaceflight has had a fatality rate of just under 4%—roughly 266,000 times greater than for commercial airplanes. Virgin suffered two major disasters during testing, killing a total of four employees and injuring four more. “A high-profile accident will come; it’s inevitable,” says Forczyk. But even that, she predicts, won’t end space tourism. People continue to climb Everest, she notes, despite the danger.

Another question is how space tourism might affect the planet. A 90-minute jaunt on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceplane is roughly as polluting as a 10-hour transatlantic flight. Other calculations suggest that a rocket launch can produce 50 to 75 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger, compared with just a few tons per passenger from a commercial airplane.

Experts warn that even Blue Origin’s New Shepard, which burns hydrogen and oxygen and emits water, could affect the climate since its combustion products are injected high into the stratosphere, where their ultimate impact has yet to be understood. 

The Federal Aviation Administration oversees all spaceflight in the US and might strengthen safety and environmental regulations. The agency currently has a moratorium on new regulations until 2023, which was designed to give the nascent industry time to develop before legislators came in with too much red tape. But few lawmakers or citizens are clamoring for more regulation. 

“There are a lot of other things for people to worry about than whether or not only billionaires get to fly in space,” says Marcia Smith, the founder and editor of the news website SpacePolicyOnline.com, which covers space programs around the world.

Nobody has yet fully articulated a compelling reason to spend enormous sums on private spaceflight. It may have incidental value for science and engineering, or offer a small number of people a sense of transcendence. 

But at the moment, it seems we do it mainly because we think it’s cool.

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How much is a seat on Virgin Galactic? $450,000. Here's what each trip includes.

Virgin Galactic will soon sell tickets for space trips to the public. The catch? They cost $450,000.

On Tuesday, the aerospace company announced plans to sell tickets to the general public to snag a seat for a future spaceflight.

Reservations open up Feb. 16 and will cost $450,000. Potential travelers must pay a $150,000 deposit to hold the spot, then pay the rest before their flight. Tickets will be available to 1,000 customers for trips later this year.

The flights will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic said  trips will last about 90 minutes.

"The spaceship gracefully flips while astronauts enjoy several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness and breath-taking views of Earth from the spaceship’s 17 windows," reads a statement from the company.

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Virgin Galactic is among several companies including SpaceX and Blue Origin – run by tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos respectively – pressing forward with plans to eventually support commercial space travel.

On July 11, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson was among six crewmembers who traveled aboard the company's space plane, the VSS Unity. Two months later, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the flight .

Blue Origin launched a manned flight on July 20 with Bezos among the members of the crew. In September, SpaceX launched its first flight with an all-civilian crew.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter:  @brettmolina23 .

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Six ways to buy a ticket to space in 2021

Earlier this month, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule safely ferried NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken back to Earth following a multi-month trip to the International Space Station (ISS). No privately built spacecraft had ever carried humans into orbit before. But unlike SpaceShipOne, which was a single craft built specifically to win a prize, there are multiple models of the Crew Dragon, each designed to be reused.   

It’s finally looking like the exciting era of space tourism is about to erupt. A handful of so-called “new space” companies are now competing to sell space tourists trips on private spacecraft. Each one has a slightly different means of reaching space, and not all of them will get you all the way into orbit. But as long as you’re rich, you should have no problem purchasing your ticket to space.

Virgin Galactic

SpaceShipOne was retired after just three successful spaceflights, but the technology lives on in Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Unity . Like its predecessor, Virgin Galactic’s rocketplane drops from a specially engineered aircraft before boosting itself to 50 miles (80 kilometers) in altitude. That’s high enough for Virgin Galactic’s pilots to earn their astronaut badges. However, others define space via the so-called Kármán line, the generally accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space that sits 62 miles (100 kilometers) above our planet’s surface.

Virgin Galactic’s goal is to become “the world’s first commercial spaceline,” and eventually they’ll offer regular flights from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. The company is planning to begin regular flights in early 2021, with CEO Richard Branson slated as the first non-professional pilot to travel on Spaceship Unity .

SpaceX is the only private rocket company to ever send a human into orbit. They’re also the only company now NASA-certified to send people to circle Earth. So, when will SpaceX start selling tickets to private citizens for trips to space? In the past, Elon Musk has said that the spacecraft could have a bright future carrying private passengers into orbit. And SpaceX recently announced that it has already sold seats on future Crew Dragon flights through other companies that are handling the logistics.

Ultimately though, Musk’s goal is to settle Mars. And to do that, he needs a bigger spacecraft. That’s why SpaceX’s engineers are working feverishly on its Starship, which is still under development. If the enormous spaceship works, it could literally rocket dozens of space tourists at a time between a number of destinations on Earth, or perhaps throughout the inner solar system. The company says that Starship would be able to travel between any two locations on Earth in less than one hour.

SpaceX is confident enough in their vessel that they already sold a Starship flight around the Moon to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. No human has traveled to the Moon in nearly 50 years, and Maezawa, a fashion designer and online clothing retailer, has said he’ll take a group of artists with him.

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos started his rocket company, Blue Origin, back in 2000. And he’s been selling Amazon stock to pump billions of dollars into the effort ever since. Like SpaceX, they’re prioritizing reusable rockets and spacecraft that can drastically reduce the cost associated with spaceflight.

Much of Blue Origin’s effort has gone into developing a pair of rockets: New Shepard and New Glenn.

New Shepard can carry six people inside a suborbital capsule some 60 miles (100 km) into space. Blue Origin has already flown a dozen test flights, and they’re still planning several additional tests before launching passengers. However, in March, Axios reported that Blue Origin could send passengers into space in 2020, though COVID-19 has caused delays across the space industry. If the company can still get its space capsule tested in 2020, it could be on course for paid flights in 2021.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin has announced that it will soon start selling tickets. The company’s website doesn’t list the price of a Blue Origin trip, but Bezos has previously said their space tourists can expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly in its New Shepard capsule.

The company is also working hard on their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift, reusable launch vehicle that Blue Origin has already invested more than $2.5 billion into developing. It’s larger than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but smaller than the rocket planned with Starship. That size could eventually enable regular passenger trips into orbit and even beyond. The company will need that capacity, too. Blue Origin’s goal is to one day have millions of people living and working in space.

Axiom Space’s goal is to create the world’s first commercial space station. In the meantime, they’ve inked a deal to send a crew of private citizens to the ISS aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule in October 2021.

Axiom’s initial crewed mission, dubbed Ax1, should send three paying astronauts to the ISS. Each ticket reportedly costs $55 million. And while it might seem like there’s a small pool of potential ticket buyers at that rate, in the U.S. alone, roughly 75,000 American households have that much money. Axiom also figures it’s just getting started selling tickets to space. In the near future, the company says it will send three crews a year to the ISS.

Back in 2014, NASA selected two companies — SpaceX and Boeing — to receive multibillion-dollar contracts to build spacecraft that could ferry astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX made good on the first crewed flight of its Commercial Crew Program contract earlier this year. Meanwhile, Boeing has yet to get its Starliner spacecraft safely to the ISS and back. Their first test flight reached orbit but failed to make the space station, and a NASA review outlined numerous necessary fixes.

Boeing will attempt another uncrewed test flight next year. And if all goes well, they could fly to the ISS by late 2021.

But once Boeing is flying to and from the ISS, the iconic aerospace company is also technically allowed to fly private passengers to the space station. They’ve been quiet on this option, but NASA has said they’d accommodate passengers at a rate of $35,000 per night.

Boeing has also hired a corporate test pilot astronaut, Christopher Ferguson. He’s been training alongside NASA’s astronauts and will be among the first to fly on Starliner. He might not count as a space tourist, but Ferguson will ultimately be part of an entirely new group of professional astronauts that work for private companies, not national space agencies.

Space Adventures

Space Adventures is an American company that offers private spaceflights to the ISS and, eventually, the moon. Since their founding in 1998, the company has sold a number of other spaceflight related experiences, like simulated zero-gravity airplane flights. And unlike their competitors, Space Adventures has sent space tourists into orbit, too. They’ve been responsible for over half a dozen paid trips to the ISS that made use of Russian spacecraft.

Most recently, they booked a launch to the space station on Russia’s veteran Soyuz spacecraft, which is set for December 2021. The mission, dubbed Soyuz MS-20, will fly with a lone cosmonaut and two Space Adventures tourists.

Space Adventures has arranged another path to get paying customers into space, too. They recently announced a deal with SpaceX that will put four space tourists in a SpaceX capsule and send them into orbit around Earth. How much will it cost? For now, both companies are keeping the cost of these tickets private. But those who do make the trip should get an excellent show. The mission will orbit at several times the height of the ISS.

Unfortunately, few of us have enough disposable income to fund a trip beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But with at least a half dozen ways for the wealthy to purchase a ticket into space next year, the hope is that the cost will continue to decline. And if that happens, you might be closer than you think to regularly having your rocket pass checked by the TSA.

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Every Space Tourism Vacation You Can Book Right Now, If You’re Rich

Thinking about the an ultimate quarantine experience we got you covered..

Things aren’t going so great on the planet Earth right now, and travel isn’t easy, but if you’ve got a bit of cash, you can really get away. A number of well-capitalized companies have been hacking away at Space Tourism, or commercially flying “regular” people into space, and now it’s on the verge of reality. Thanks to a great deal of financial and human capital put in by organizations ranging from NASA to billionaire-backed startups , we are inches close to turning it into reality.

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Space vacation packages come in a wide variety. For beginners, British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (SPCE) is offering a 1.5-hour joy ride to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA is opening the International Space Station to private citizens. And, for hard-core space explorers, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has promised to fly you to the Moon (for a hefty price) in as soon as 2023.

Below we’ve put together the latest statuses of various space tourism projects in the market.

Virgin Galactic’s 90-Minute Suborbital Ride

Destination: Edge of the Earth’s atmosphere

Price: $250,000 per person

Earliest available time: late 2020

Virgin Galactic’s supersonic spaceplane, VSS Unity, will fly passengers up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level, which is right above the Kármán Line dividing the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. From there, passengers will get a stunning view of the Earth’s curvature. Then, during the descent, they will experience several minutes of weightlessness like a true astronaut.

VSS Unity has completed two successful human test flights and is in its final stage of testing. Virgin Galactic plans to fly its first paying customer, possibly the company’s founder Richard Branson himself, as soon as this year.

Blue Origin’s Vertical Suborbital Ride

Destination: The edge of the Earth’s atmosphere

Price: $200,000 and $300,000

Earliest available time: unknown

Blue Origin , owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is developing a suborbital tourism program similar to Virgin Galactic’s but using a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL) rocket-capsule system called New Shepard. The New Shepard spacecraft has successfully flown above the Kármán Line and returned to the ground.

Blue Origin had planned to launch its first human test flight in 2019 and begin selling commercial tickets (reportedly priced between $200,000 and $300,000 ) soon after. Yet, the plan was quietly canceled last year. The company has yet to make public statements about new test and rollout dates.

NASA’s Multi-Day ISS Getaway 

Destination: International Space Station

Price: $35,000 per night

In June 2019, NASA unveiled its grand plan to allow private citizens to fly to the International Space Station under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program . Passengers will fly in either SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft or Boeing’s Starliner  vessel.

The Crew Dragon recently completed its final crewed test and is ready to be deployed for commercial missions. NASA has said it will allow up to two private trips to the ISS a year, each lasting up to 30 days. The total cost of the trip would be around $50 million per person, the agency said.

SpaceX’s ‘Back to the Moon’ Package 

Destination: the Moon

Price: “Not a trivial amount’

Earliest available time: 2023

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has the ultimate space vacation offering: a personalized trip to the Moon. The package has one committing customer so far: Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa , who signed up for the trip in September 2018 and has put down an undisclosed deposit. Musk has said the full ticket price is “not a trivial amount.”

SpaceX is currently building prototypes for the rocket ( Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) rocket ) and spaceship (Starship) that will fly Maezawa to the Moon. If all tests go according to the plan, a human launch could take place as early as 2023.

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How much does it cost to visit the International Space Station?

If you have to ask axiom space's ticket price, you can't afford it.

A group of four private astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on May 22, completing a journey from Cape Canaveral to the habitat orbiting 408 kilometers (254 miles) above the Earth.

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The mission, managed by Axiom Space , is the second time that paying passengers have flown independently to the ISS. Its crew includes Axiom employee Peggy Whitson, a retired NASA astronaut acting as the mission commander, as well as John Shoffner, the former CEO of fiber optics maker Dura-Line, and two government astronauts from Saudi Arabia, Ali Al Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. The latter is the first Arab woman in space.

Getting to space has always been famously expensive, and that’s still the truth today; what’s changed in recent years is that it’s a commodity available for purchase. Past orbital space tourists relied on brokers to make one-off deals with Russia’s cash-strapped space program. With the debut of SpaceX’s crew Dragon spacecraft in 2020, NASA announced that it would welcome private passengers at the ISS if they paid for their room and board.

Now, anyone with sufficient cash can hunt for one of the limited slots to head to orbit. Axiom hopes to fly about a twice a year, but NASA officials say they had trouble finding a window for this mission amid other upcoming activity at the station, including a cargo re-supply, a test flight of a new Boeing spacecraft, and the arrival of the next set of NASA astronauts.

How much will such a trip set you back? At least $60 million—with an emphasis on “at least.” This table shows the publicly available data on how much a private mission might cost per astronaut.

The real cost of flying to the ISS is much higher

But there’s much more to think about. For one, the cost per seat to ride on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is an estimate for NASA (pdf) from 2019, and it has   likely risen.

Presumably, Axiom’s customers also cover the cost of Whitson’s flight, since NASA requires a professional astronaut chaperone onboard. That adds about $20 million to each paying passenger’s ride. Then there’s the question of how much Axiom is charging. Despite the high cost of the trip, the limited supply of seats suggests Axiom could charge deep-pocketed individuals and governments a decent fee for getting them to orbit. By the time everything adds up, the cost of a trip could reach toward $100 million a person.

NASA hopes to replace the aging ISS with privately operated space stations that can serve its needs in low-Earth orbit, while also attracting customers like space tourists, foreign governments, and private companies. Letting private companies visit the publicly funded lab aims to prove that there’s enough demand for these services to attract sizable private investment.

Judging by Axiom’s flight plans and its goal of launching a new module to the ISS in 2025—alongside the other companies plotting to launch their own orbital habitats—NASA’s strategy is working so far.

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When Can I Buy a Ticket to Space? A Guide for Non-Billionaires.

We’re at the dawn of a new era for space exploration, with thrill-seeking civilians boldly going where no tourist has gone before. Over 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, a handful of companies are planning to take non-astronauts with sufficiently massive bank accounts on a galactic tour: Tesla Founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin , and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

Here’s everything you need to know about the rise of space tourism, from which billionaires are leaving Earth imminently to when the rest of us might be able to join them.

What’s the history of civilian space travel?

The initial effort to send a civilian into space ended in disaster: In 1986, Christa McAuliffe was set to be the first civilian and teacher in space, but she and six crewmates were tragically killed during the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger.

After that, NASA largely forbade the practice. But Russia’s then-struggling space program stepped up to the plate. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito paid a whopping $20 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the first civilian to visit the International Space Station – humanity’s home away from home. According to Space.com , just seven space tourists have followed in his footsteps in the last 20 years, via Russia’s Space Agency. But the year ahead should be a busy one for the nascent industry, with more and more civilians reaching for the stars.

Who’s heading to space next?

The competition between the major players in the billionaire space race heated up when Bezos announced that he would jet off to the brink of space and back on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On July 1 – just hours after Bezos announced that in addition to his brother, he’d be joined on the flight by aviation pioneer Wally Funk – Richard Branson revealed that he would beat the Amazon founder into space by nine days. Branson will blast off on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity rocketplane on July 11.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning what it’s billing as “the world’s first all-civilian space flight” in late 2021. The multiday flight into low Earth orbit, dubbed “Inspiration4” and funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, aims to raise awareness for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and begin “a new era for human spaceflight and exploration.” The crew includes Isaacman, childhood cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux, plus two others. It’s currently scheduled to launch “no earlier than September 15, 2021,” per the mission’s website.

SpaceX aims to keep the momentum going by partnering with Houston-based Axiom Space to send more everyday people into space using its Crew Dragon spacecraft, this time going to the International Space Station. Axiom’s first private ISS mission is set to launch “no earlier than January 2022.” Its second mission is the focus of the Discovery Channel reality-TV show Who Wants to Be an Astronaut? , in which contestants take on extreme challenges for a chance at a ticket to the ISS. Axiom Space plans to eventually host civilian space station jaunts every six months.

What does this cost?

Unsurprisingly, going to space comes with a hefty price tag. Axiom passengers will pay the low, low price of $55 million for the flight and a stay on the ISS. Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic’s suborbital trips — where passengers can experience weightlessness for several minutes before falling back to Earth — are far more reasonable in cost, at $250,000 . Six hundred people have already made reservations for 90-minute flights on Branson’s SpaceShipTwo, Reuters reports. And while Bezos’s Blue Origin hasn’t announced official prices, an auction for a seat to join him and his brother on his brief sojourn to space in July went for a cool $28 million .

How safe is it?

Hollywood isn’t exaggerating: Going to space is inherently dangerous. Congress agreed in 2004 to largely let the space-tourism industry self-regulate, so there are few laws and restrictions on taking civilians into space.

“One way that the government could have gone was to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to certify the spacecraft, make sure that they’re safe and give them the stamp of approval,’” Mark Sundahl, an expert at space law at Cleveland State University, told Discover magazine . “But they didn’t go that way. Instead, they said ‘We’re going to prove we’re protecting space tourists by just requiring the companies to tell them that they may die, and then it’s up to them to make a decision if they want to take that risk or not.’ That’s the approach that the government took, and it is somewhat controversial.”

What other types of space tourism are in the works?

Strapping in on a rocket and blasting off into space isn’t the only type of travel available for those eager to leave this planet. Human space flight company Space Perspective is planning to fly passengers to the edge of space in a high-tech version of a hot-air balloon, “the size of a football stadium,” lifted by hydrogen. Flights are planned for early 2024, with tickets priced firmly at $125,000 per person.

For another out-of-this-world vacation, check out the company Orbital Assembly Corporation , which plans to open a luxury space hotel in 2027. The hotel, named Voyager Station, looks almost like a Ferris wheel floating in orbit and features a restaurant, gym, and Earth-viewing lounges and bars. A three-and-a-half-day stay is expected to cost up to $5 million, the Washington Post reports.

Are other celebrities planning to explore space?

A slew of stars have already bought their tickets to space with Virgin Galactic, among them Justin Bieber, Ashton Kusher, and Leonardo DiCaprio, according to the New York Daily News . Last year, Actor Tom Cruise and NASA announced their own collaboration to make a movie on the International Space Station.

When can the average person do this?

Once again, the biggest barrier to space is the price tag. But air travel was also once prohibitively expensive, with a one-way ticket across the country costing more than half the price of a new car ; one can expect similar price reductions in space travel. For now, partaking in a sweepstakes or reality show might be the best bet for those with tiny bank accounts and big dreams of taking to the stars.

This post was updated after Branson announced he would head to space on July 11.

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Space Tourism: Can A Civilian Go To Space?

2021 has been a busy year for private space tourism: overall, more than 15 civilians took a trip to space during this year. In this article, you will learn more about the space tourism industry, its history, and the companies that are most likely to make you a space tourist.

What is space tourism?

Brief history of space tourism, space tourism companies, orbital and suborbital space flights, how much does it cost for a person to go to space, is space tourism worth it, can i become a space tourist, why is space tourism bad for the environment.

Space tourism is human space travel for recreational or leisure purposes . It’s divided into different types, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism.

However, there are broader definitions for space tourism. According to the Space Tourism Guide , space tourism is a commercial activity related to space that includes going to space as a tourist, watching a rocket launch, going stargazing, or traveling to a space-focused destination.

The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American multimillionaire, who spent nearly eight days onboard the International Space Station in April 2001. This trip cost him $20 million and made Tito the first private citizen who purchased his space ticket. Over the next eight years, six more private citizens followed Tito to the International Space Station to become space tourists.

As space tourism became a real thing, dozens of companies entered this industry hoping to capitalize on renewed public interest in space, including Blue Origin in 2000 and Virgin Galactic in 2004. In the 2000s, space tourists were limited to launches aboard Russian Soyuz aircraft and only could go to the ISS. However, everything changed when the other players started to grow up on the market. There are now a variety of destinations and companies for travels to space.

There are now six major space companies that are arranging or planning to arrange touristic flights to space:

• Virgin Galactic;
• Blue Origin;
• Axiom Space;
• Space Perspective.

While the first two are focused on suborbital flights, Axiom and Boeing are working on orbital missions. SpaceX, in its turn, is prioritizing lunar tourism in the future. For now, Elon Musk’s company has allowed its Crew Dragon spacecraft to be chartered for orbital flights, as it happened with the Inspiration4 3-day mission . Space Perspective is developing a different balloon-based system to carry customers to the stratosphere and is planning to start its commercial flights in 2024.

Orbital and suborbital flights are very different. Taking an orbital flight means staying in orbit; in other words, going around the planet continually at a very high speed to not fall back to the Earth. Such a trip takes several days, even a week or more. A suborbital flight in its turn is more like a space hop — you blast off, make a huge arc, and eventually fall back to the Earth, never making it into orbit. A flight duration, in this case, ranges from 2 to 3 hours.

Here is an example: a spaceflight takes you to an altitude of 100 km above the Earth. To enter into orbit — make an orbital flight — you would have to gain a speed of about 28,000 km per hour (17,400 mph) or more. But to reach the given altitude and fall back to the Earth — make a suborbital flight — you would have to fly at only 6,000 km per hour (3,700 mph). This flight takes less energy, less fuel; therefore, it is less expensive.

• Virgin Galactic: $250,000 for a 2-hour suborbital flight at an altitude of 80 km;
• Blue Origin: approximately $300,000 for 12 minutes suborbital flight at an altitude of 100 km;
• Axiom Space: $55 million for a 10-day orbital flight;
• Space Perspective: $125,000 for a 6-hour flight to the edge of space (32 km above the Earth).

The price depends, but remember that suborbital space flights are always cheaper.

What exactly do you expect from a journey to space? Besides the awesome impressions, here is what you can experience during such a trip:

• Weightlessness . Keep in mind that during a suborbital flight you’ll get only a couple of minutes in weightlessness, but it will be truly fascinating .
• Space sickness . The symptoms include cold sweating, malaise, loss of appetite, nausea, fatigue, and vomiting. Even experienced astronauts are not immune from it!
• G-force . 1G is the acceleration we feel due to the force of gravity; a usual g-force astronauts experience during a rocket launch is around 3gs. To understand how a g-force influences people , watch this video.

For now, the most significant barrier for space tourism is price. But air travel was also once expensive; a one-way ticket cost more than half the price of a new car . Most likely, the price for space travel will reduce overtime as well. For now, you need to be either quite wealthy or win in a competition, as did Sian Proctor, a member of Inspiration4 mission . But before spending thousands of dollars on space travel, here is one more fact you might want to consider.

Rocket launches are harmful to the environment in general. During the burning of rocket fuels, rocket engines release harmful gases and soot particles (also known as black carbon) into the upper atmosphere, resulting in ozone depletion. Think about this: in 2018 black-carbon-producing rockets emitted about the same amount of black carbon as the global aviation industry emits annually.

However, not all space companies use black carbon for fuel. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has a liquid hydrogen-fuelled engine: hydrogen doesn’t emit carbon but simply turns into water vapor when burning.

The main reason why space tourism could be harmful to the environment is its potential popularity. With the rising amount of rocket launches the carbon footprint will only increase — Virgin Galactic alone aims to launch 400 of these flights annually. Meanwhile, the soot released by 1,000 space tourism flights could warm Antarctica by nearly 1°C !

Would you want to become a space tourist? Let us know your opinion on social media and share the article with your friends, if you enjoyed it! Also, the Best Mobile App Awards 2021 is going on right now, and we would very much appreciate it if you would vote for our Sky Tonight app . Simply tap "Vote for this app" in the upper part of the screen. No registration is required!

Pioneer humanity’s new space age.

Spaceflight has the unique ability to shift our perspectives, our technology, and even our trajectory as a species.

As the spaceline for Earth, our mission is to transform access to space for the benefit of humankind; to reveal the wonder of space to more people than ever before.

Join us, and help pioneer this exciting new space age for humanity.

Find your space in history.

Fewer than 700 humans have ever experienced space. As a Virgin Galactic astronaut, your journey marks the dawn of a new space age, where leaving Earth’s atmosphere is an experience no longer reserved solely for professional astronauts.

From the moment you join our global community of pioneering adventurers, to the day you earn your astronaut wings, to the years of telling the greatest story off Earth, your spaceflight can change the world for good.

“Taking more and more passengers out into space will enable them, and us, to look both outwards and back, but with a fresh perspective in both directions.”

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Space Tourism: How Much Should You Save For A Space Trip in 2024?

Commercial space travel has developed to include not only convenience in space transportation for astronauts, but also once-in-a-lifetime outer space exploration for the idle rich known as space tourists. Before, astronauts traversed space in capsules, rockets, and orbiters. But with commercially designed space vehicles developed under NASA’s collaborative programs with space aviation agencies, a more convenient and “human-friendly” mode of space movement now enables non-space professionals (99 percent of our readers) the rare experience of a space holiday.

The world is indeed getting smaller every day. It’s not that Earth, as official home for humans, is diminishing in size. It’s the feeling of running out of tangible space, what with overpopulation, and virtual space narrowing as a consequence of the information age. The good news is there is a vast space out there, and these days, you can literally go far from the madding crowd, as long as you have the bucks.

Inter-galactic researches and space travel tests have paved the way for a safe outer space travel experience for non-astronauts. The current safety standards require operating companies to meet the FAA requirements and standards for safety of the public, both during ascent and during the final re-entry. The law also requires crew and passengers to sign informed consent agreements .

Although outer space tourism is still in its baby steps, bookings for some space tourism operators are now on-going. Like any trip preparation, space travel entails questions that a smart and savvy tourist always asks. What are the trip’s highlights? How long will it take? Is it safe? What is the cost of a trip to outer space?

We’ve rounded up facts and figures on space tourism gigs that you may want to save up for. There is one that is free, but with just one little condition. Find out your options.

1. XCOR Aerospace

Price:  $95,000 per person

Travel dates:  The company plans to start test flights in 2014. It will be another 6-18 months before it can be ready to ferry passengers to space.

Vehicle:  The Lynx rocket plane which can hold a pilot plus one passenger.

More Info: The Lynx will take tourists to suborbital space and will make four trips per day. XCOR has sold about 300 tickets at $95,000 each, which has given it enough funds to develop its spacecraft. The company’s CEO, Jeff Greason, says they are not aiming to get ahead of competitors in the space race and their battle is with economics and physics.

2. World View Enterprises

Vehicle: A pressurized capsule that is hauled up by a space balloon and parafoil.

Price: $75,000 per seat

Travel Date: Balloon trips are scheduled to start in 2016.

More Info: The balloon trip will take space tourists to 100,000 feet above earth. The vehicle will float up into the suborbital flight and then glide back. The trip is expected to last for about four hours. Passengers do not need any anti-gravity training. They can enjoy refreshing beverages in the cabin.

3. Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Space Trip

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will carry stars like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio on an outer space holiday (www.virgingalactic.com)

Company: Virgin Galactic. It pioneers commercial outer space flights and the world’s wealthiest are naturally first in line to sign up, led by reel stars Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber.

Price: US$250,000. Required for a guaranteed seat on the earliest available flight. Bookings are easily accomplished online or through the firm’s accredited space agents. The earlier the reservation is made, the sooner one gets to travel into space.

Travel date: Flights are scheduled to start by 2015.

Vehicle: SpaceshipTwo featuring the Astrobatic cabin, it is capable of carrying six passengers up to 68 miles above the earth’s surface.

The Trip: The firm calls its space passengers future astronauts, numbering about 600 already. They embark on a 3-day preparation with the crew, and are set to an initial 50,000 feet launch, after which the vehicle hauls itself into space at three times the speed of sound. The dream experience documentation reads a lot like any other first-time tourist diary, making the actual trip a must for those who need more than words like “spectacular views” and “the silence of space.”

Freebies: Aside from the outer space trip, paid passengers are also given access to exclusive Virgin Group events like the G-force training, test flight celebrations in Mojave Desert and some trips with company founder Sir Richard Branson.

4. SpaceX Dragon Space Trip

Company: Space Exploration Technologies

Travel date: 2015

Price: The company has announced that its target launching price for the trip is $140 million (7-crew package) or $20m per seat.

Vehicle: Dragon capsule. This is a free-flying and reusable spacecraft that made headlines last year for being the first commercial space vehicle in history to successfully attach to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) through its robotic arms. It is used to transport cargo and crew, for in-space technology demonstrations and scientific tests. With the Dragon space trip, one can ride this famous space shell.

The Trip: The Dragon space trip is a kind of low earth orbital flight. It is in line with SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s mission of revolutionizing access to space. The upcoming Dragon flights would include non-NASA crew members, the first of which is timelined by mid-2015. The trip is an orbital flight into a 370-kilometer orbit. (More revolutionary space flights are planned by Musk, including flights enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars in 10 to 20 years time under the company’s Mars One colonization project).

5. Zero-G Weightless Experience

Company: Zero Gravity Corporation

Travel Date: Ongoing

Price: $4,950 plus 5 percent tax

Vehicle: Modified Boeing 727

The Trip: Lasting some 90 to 100 minutes, the Zero-G space trip enables one to “float like an astronaut and fly like a superhero in weightlessness.” It consists of parabolic arc flights, which simulate weightlessness in space, much like the astronauts we see on space station interviews. The flight swirls the passenger to 15 individual parabolas, consisting of one Martian gravity simulation, two lunar gravity simulations and 12 weightlessness simulations.

Because the parabolic flights simulate the space experience, the Zero- G space trip is much cheaper than full-on space travels. Still, with the Martian and lunar gravity close-to-real experience, it is value for money already.

Freebies: The Zero-G flight suit and merchandise, certificate of weightless completion, photos and video, and Regravitation Celebration. The trip also offers family and friends bonding time via the Non-Flyer Guest Package, where companions who do not wish to fly can still join the many pre- and post-flight events.

What if living on Earth proves too much already? Is there a one-way outer space ticket for the Earth-worn and tired? Consider signing up for the Mars One project. Around 78,000 people from 120 countries have already applied (some people reportedly even signed up their own family members) for a one-way trip to Mars to join an experimental settlement project on the red planet.

6. The Mars One Project

NASA image of Martian homeplate captured by Mars Rover Spirit shows landforms and surfaces similar to Earth

Company: Mars One Foundation and Interplanetary Media Group

Price: Free (selected volunteer basis)

Travel Date: 2023

The Trip: The recruitment dubbed “Inhabitants Wanted” started in April this year via a televised global selection process. Anyone 18 years old and above can apply, with intelligence, mental and physical health, and dedication to the project being the highly important criteria. The selected “inhabitants” will undergo eight years of training before the 2023 flight.

Preparations for the trip include a series of robotic cargo missions and outpost building for Earth simulation between 2016 and 2021. The first four immigrants will arrive in 2023, followed by more settlers every two years. The “pioneer settlers” will not return to Earth, but will live and work there, making it their permanent new home. This mission will be broadcasted, from the selection of inhabitants to arrival and day-to-day living on Mars.

The Future of Space Travel: Can You Afford it?

So what’s the future of outer space travel especially in terms of cost and affordability for the 99 percent? Industry observers think that once commercial space tourism becomes steadily successful, it won’t be long before high demand and more industry players scamper to take a piece of this highly profitable pursuit.

It will take over 83 months of diligently saving one’s $3,000 gross monthly salary to raise the Virgin Galactic reservation deposit, let alone the whole package. Is there a chance space travel can become more affordable like airline industry fees? There could be.

The initial high cost of space travel is intended to fund more researches and conduct the model flights, all meant to lower human space travel cost in the future and enable the experience for all, without having to shell out tetragazillion dollars. While expanding the playground for the idle rich, it is also expected to open the floodgates for new opportunities in career, business, education, science, technology, finance, law, and commerce (especially true for space apps and widgets developers).

With this, it won’t be long before we see the days of traditional earthbound events and activities expanding into outersphere proportions, more important of which is the Ms. Universe pageant and then some spacesports (Space Olympics, NBA Space Series, FIFA Space Cup), spaceshopping (God knows Earth has ran out of land to satisfy megaretailers’ demand for more malls) and spacepublishing beginning with The Ultimate Space Travel Guide for Under $300 or Cheap Martian Hotels from $19.99.

Are you willing to save up big for a dream outer space travel? Or do you have ideas that will replicate the experience minus the high-heavens cost?

By Astrid Eira

Astrid Eira is a resident B2B expert of FinancesOnline, focusing on the SaaS niche. She specializes in accounting and human resource management software, writing honest and straightforward reviews of some of the most popular systems around. Being a small business owner herself, Astrid uses her expertise to help educate business owners and entrepreneurs on how new technology can help them run their operations. She's an avid fan of the outdoors, where you'll find her when she's not crunching numbers or testing out new software.

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The idea that space travel can be something like planning a Lapland holiday is most welcome. Though I bet it's not as easy as what Virgin galactic purpotes it in their website. Before training with the crew and certainly before the Mojave parties with Branson, there's got to be some psychological tests apart from the usual diagnostics, I presume. Does space tour operators share obligation on this safety aspect? As a travelz and tour operator myself, I do hope the standard waiver does not apply here. While the informed consent expands co-responsibility between space operators and passengers, (I have yet to give it the full time, maybe if I have disposable $250k to join a group space tour), I figure this won't do once space travel becomes, as you guys very well foresee it, affordable for the greater public, since that's what this eventually will come into, like airflights. Anyway, since this eventuality will certainly take centuries, let's just live for the presents and hope those who are privileged to experience space can actually share it to people on ground. I read somewhere that there's a lot of confidentiality clause on Virgin, just hoping real accounts and experiences being shared afterwards are not one of them. Or else how can we know if Lapland is even better and cheaper? Nice read, I should have said that first thanks.

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PIP changes: Everything you need to know if you receive disability benefit

The government is looking at changing who is eligible for PIP, how decisions on it are made and the method by which recipients are compensated.

News reporter

Wednesday 1 May 2024 13:19, UK

The government has opened a consultation on the disability support system PIP (Personal Independence Payment), meaning eligibility criteria and other aspects of it could change.

Proposed changes come as part of the prime minister's pledge to reform the welfare system if the Conservatives win the next general election .

The criteria for getting PIP could change, as could the types of payments received by those who are eligible.

But what is PIP, who is able to get it, what is the government planning to change and who would be impacted?

Here's what you need to know.

What is PIP?

PIP is a tax-free payment given to people to help with the extra costs caused by long-term ill-health or disability.

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There are two parts to it:

• A daily living part - for those who have a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability
• A mobility part - for people who have difficulty doing certain everyday tasks or getting around.

It's possible to meet the criteria for one part or both parts, and payments vary for each.

Those who qualify for the daily living part are given either a lower rate of £72.65 per week or a higher rate of £108.55, and those who qualify for the mobility part either receive £28.70 or £75.75.

Who is currently eligible?

People aged between 16-64 can get PIP regardless of whether they work if they expect their difficulties to last for at least 12 months from when they started.

Those who have been told they may have 12 months or less to live can also apply and may get PIP more quickly.

Sufferers of both physical disability and cognitive or mental health conditions like anxiety can meet the criteria for both types of PIP.

There is no list of medical conditions that determine who qualifies for PIP. Instead, applicants are assessed on the level of help they need with specific activities.

For the daily living part, people might need help with things like:

• Preparing food
• Eating and drinking
• Managing medicines or treatments
• Washing and bathing
• Using the toilet
• Dressing and undressing
• Socialising and being around other people
• Talking, listening and understanding.

For the mobility payments, there is assistance for things like:

• Working out a route and following it
• Physically moving around
• Leaving your home.

How does the government make its decisions?

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) carries out an assessment to work out the level of help a person should receive.

A person's needs are judged on a points system whereby the more severe the impact in a particular area and the greater the help that is required, the more points a person gets and the more money they receive.

For example, an applicant will get two points on the daily living score if they need to use an aid or appliance (like a prostheses or easy grip handles on utensils) when cooking a meal, or they will get eight points if they cannot prepare food or cook at all.

Similarly for the mobility score, the applicant will get four points if they can stand and move between 50 metres and 200 metres, and 12 points if they can only move between one metre and 20 metres.

The answers are assessed by health professionals who then provide a report for DWP case managers with recommendations on what to give the applicant, if anything.

Applicants can provide assessors with additional medical evidence as part of a claim, but it is not a requirement, as a person's self-assessment about the impact their condition is prioritised when making a decision.

What does the government want to change?

It is looking at changing PIP in a number of ways, potentially affecting those who are eligible for it and the type of help those who are granted it will get. Below we summarise the key points in the consultation:

Different assessment model

The government is looking at introducing a new assessment model based entirely or partly on the diagnosis given to an individual.

It says it is considering whether "evidence of a clinical diagnosis made by a healthcare professional could provide a more objective assessment of need" than a self-assessment.

In other words, decision makers may look at what clinical diagnoses people have rather than asking applicants how it affects their lives.

Eligibility reform

This is an alternative to changing the assessment model.

The government says it may keep the current assessment, but change the questions so that they are less repetitive and to "ensure they are working as intended".

"Our aim would be to ensure that the criteria are fair and that we focus support on people with the highest needs and significant ongoing extra costs," the government states.

The government is also considering looking at changing the length someone needs to have been suffering for due to their disability before they become eligible for PIP, because "we know many people who have short-term illnesses can make a full recovery".

"We also know that during the early phase of an illness or condition, it is difficult to understand the full impact the condition will have on you," it says.

It has not specified the length of time this would change to. As it stands, people have to show that the negative effects of their condition have been present for three months before applying and that they are likely to last for another nine months after PIP is first given to them.

Changes to payments

In the current system, PIP claimants are given monthly cash payments which they can use as they see fit, whether that be things like aids and mobility devices, covering increased energy costs due to special equipment or paying higher premiums due to their condition.

The government says claimants often use the money for common household costs or some "view their PIP award as compensation for being disabled rather than as an award for extra costs".

With this in mind, the government is considering the following alternatives to cash transfer:

• Catalogue/shop scheme - where there would be an approved list of items from which disabled people could choose items at reduced or no cost
• Voucher scheme - where disabled people could receive vouchers to contribute towards specific costs
• Receipt-based system - where claimants buy approved aid, appliances or services for themselves and then provide proof of purchase to claim a contribution from the government
• One-off grants - a contribution to specific, significant costs such as for home adaptations or expensive equipment.

Aligning support

The government is considering merging PIP with the existing support people with disabilities get from the NHS and their local authorities.

This would mean instead of going through a separate PIP assessment, it would be linked with local support networks. The consultation does not go into detail about how this might work.

Why does the government say it wants to change PIP?

It says PIP caseloads and costs are "spiralling" as there are now 2.6 million people of working age claiming it.

There are 33,000 new awards for PIP each month, which it says is more than double the rate before the pandemic.

In its proposal, the government adds: "This is expected to cost the taxpayer £28bn a year by 2028/29 - a 110% increase in spending since 2019.

"This is in part fuelled by the rise in people receiving PIP for mental-health conditions such as mixed anxiety and depressive disorders, with monthly awards doubling from 2,200 to 5,300 a month since 2019."

It says its main three priorities through making changes are:

• Providing the right support to the people who need it most
• Targeting our resources most effectively
• Supporting disabled people and those with long-term health conditions to live independently and reach their full potential.

Announcing the consultation on 29 April, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told the Commons: "This government's priority is to make sure that our welfare system is fair and compassionate. Fair on the taxpayer, by ensuring that people of working age who can work, do work, and fair on those who are in most need of the state's help.

"We know that any additional cost arising from a disability or health condition, which PIP is intended to help with, can vary significantly and is unique to the individual circumstances."

He argued that changes to the current "one-size fits all" system will offer "bespoke support tailored to individual needs".

What do critics say?

Some believe the proposed changes are going to target people with mental-health problems and stop them getting PIP, and they have not been encouraged by the fact the government has not specified which conditions would be eligible for PIP under reforms.

Mr Stride suggested to the Times that people with "milder mental-health conditions" would no longer receive financial support, adding talking therapies, social care packages and respite care could be used as alternatives.

James Taylor, the executive director of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, called for an end to the "reckless assault" on disabled people and to fix the "real underlying issues".

"It's hard to have any faith that this consultation is about anything other than cutting the benefits bill, no matter the impact," Mr Taylor said.

The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) branded the consultation "cynical and cruel".

Speaking on behalf of DBC, Ceri Smith head of policy at the MS Society, said: "If the government truly wants a 'stronger, healthier and fairer society', they should start by addressing NHS waiting lists and fixing social care. Instead, this approach will punish disabled people and push even more into poverty."

How can I have my say?

You can view the consultation, which is open until 23 July, here .

Once you have read it, you can respond online via the government's form or by emailing [email protected]