Florida Company Wants to Fly People to Space In Giant Balloons Starting in 2024

Get ready to join the 19-mile-high club.

It sounds like a pipe dream from the early 20th Century, not the 2020s–taking a balloon into space. But if their plans pan out, Space Perspective will soon be floating wedding parties and office meetings up, up, and away in their beautiful balloon. 

The Florida-based travel startup will take passengers up to the very edge of space in a balloon they’ve dubbed Neptune. 

The space balloon carries a pressurized capsule with an 8-passenger capacity which Space Perspective plans to launch from the Kennedy Space Center at NASA. 

Passengers will reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (just shy of 19 miles) after a two-hour ride. Once there the journey will be all about drifting above the planet taking in vistas normally reserved for astronauts. 

Only Neptune passengers will have an onboard bar and restroom for convenience’s sake. After the trip is over, passengers will end their six-hour ride with a (hopefully gentle) ocean landing. From there, they’ll board a boat to get back to land.

In a press release Space Perspective Founder and Co-CEO Jane Poynter said the company is “committed to fundamentally changing the way people have access to space – both to perform much-needed research to benefit life on Earth and to affect how we view and connect with our planet.”

Space Perspective plans to book events such as weddings as well as trips for privately-funded scientific research.

While a trip into space surely isn’t cheap, it’s seems to be less than what Virgin Galactic plans to charge interstellar tourists, reports Robb Report. 

Space Perspective opened up ticket sales for the first commercial flights in 2024 for $150,000. Virgin Galactic initially planned to charge $250,000 for its first flights, but that number is expected to rise, while the third astronaut joining Jeff and Mark Bezos aboard the maiden July 2020 commercial Blue Origin flight paid $28 million for the seat.

Space Perspective plans to launch three flights per year, first from the Space Coast Spaceport in Titusville, Florida, and then at other locations around the US, and eventually internationally.

For more information, check out thespaceperspective.com.