High altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, raises $40 million
Capitalism in space: The Florida-based high altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, has successfully secured $40 million in investment capital funding, which the company says will be sufficient for them to begin flights by 2024.
Unlike other space-tourism companies, Space Perspective isn’t relying on rockets to send passengers to space. Instead, it will use a balloon to carry its roomy pressurized “Spaceship Neptune” capsule up to 100,000 feet before gently coming back down to Earth and splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Each trip is expected to last about six hours with about two hours at the 100,000-foot mark.
They say their ticket price will be $125,000, which is far less than the suborbital space missions of Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic, but significantly more than the $50,000 that the other U.S. high altitude balloon company, Arizona-based Worldview, says it will charge for similar flights.
Nonetheless, the company’s CEO says they have already booked 25 flights.
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Capitalism in space: The Florida-based high altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, has successfully secured $40 million in investment capital funding, which the company says will be sufficient for them to begin flights by 2024.
Unlike other space-tourism companies, Space Perspective isn’t relying on rockets to send passengers to space. Instead, it will use a balloon to carry its roomy pressurized “Spaceship Neptune” capsule up to 100,000 feet before gently coming back down to Earth and splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Each trip is expected to last about six hours with about two hours at the 100,000-foot mark.
They say their ticket price will be $125,000, which is far less than the suborbital space missions of Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic, but significantly more than the $50,000 that the other U.S. high altitude balloon company, Arizona-based Worldview, says it will charge for similar flights.
Nonetheless, the company’s CEO says they have already booked 25 flights.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
At altitude for 2 hours, rather than a few minutes, for less than a new Porsche? Heck, yeah. No, you don’t get to say you’re an ‘astronaut’, but the view is about the same, It is what it is: a high-altitude balloon ride. But 125k is an attractive price to many,
Blair Ivey:
The question is what is more important: 1. The view of the earth, especially of the thin atmosphere, or 2. The experience of weightlessness?
For “Captain Kirk” it was obviously the former, the experience of the difference between the black nothingness and home earth. I guess that applies to most people. Those who are looking for the sporty element of weightlessness can book parabolic flights in a jet aircraft for about $ 5,000.
As for the balloon flight, I would like to go a little higher. Unmanned balloons have reached a height of 50 km.
Correction : replace “height” by “altitude”
Questioner: I understand the intent, but a 50km-high balloon would be an attraction in itself.