A few dozen very wealthy people have flown to space on ships operated by private spaceflight companies. Two companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin take paying customers above the Karmen Line, 62 miles high, which defines the start of space. Passengers experience brief moments of weightlessness and enjoy an equally brief view of space and our spherical planet below them before plunging back down to Earth. Neither of these two companies takes passengers on orbital flights around Earth. The entire flight takes a matter of minutes, and these passengers pay as much as $25M for the experience. The private passengers must undergo a few days of training for the experience.
While all those spaceflight passengers
claim the experience to be well worth the price, that’s not something ordinary
people like you and I can afford. But a much cheaper option is about to become
available. A company called Space Perspective expects to launch the maiden passenger
voyage of its Spaceship Neptune later this year. It’s not a typical rocket. A
balloon will carry a lavish, spherical passenger cabin 20 miles high. It won’t
technically reach space, but the company claims the view is very similar to the
suborbital flights. Passengers will experience the blackness of space and see
the curvature of our planet below, but will not experience weightlessness.
Artist's illustration of Spaceship
Neptune high in the atmosphere. Credit: Space Perspective
The first Spaceship Neptune capsule, named Excelsior, will have plenty of room to move around in. A company post on social media says “Spaceship Neptune will have the largest windows ever flown to space and a spherical design that allows for the roomiest interior of any human spaceflight capsule ever made" The 16-foot diameter cabin has rows of padded seats facing the multiple giant windows, 5 feet high by nearly 2 feet wide. The capsule even includes a bar station and a bathroom.
The capsule ascends at a leisurely
12 miles per hour, taking two hours to reach the final altitude. This gentle
liftoff means passengers don’t feel the multiple g-forces from a
traditional rocket launch. Passengers then spend two floating near the edge of
space followed by a two-hour descent and a gentle splash down in the ocean. A
waiting ship gently lifts the capsule onto its deck, and passengers are out
within 15 minutes of landing.
Spaceship Neptune creators have strong qualifications. The company’s CEOs, Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter, also co-founded Paragon Space Development Corp. Life support and thermal control systems from Paragon have been included in the designs of every human-rated spacecraft the United States has ever flown.
While Spaceship Neptune won’t reach
true outer space, it surpasses a key boundary called the Armstrong line. This
is the height at which air pressure is so low that water will boil at normal
body temperature.
The $125,000 ticket price is still rather steep for the ordinary person, but far more affordable than the millions of
dollars for a suborbital flight. And the two-hour duration at altitude allows
for a memorable time, even if you can’t brag about going to space.
