Travel agency buys two Space Perspective high altitude balloon flights
Graphic of Space Perspective’s Neptune capsule.
The travel agency Cruise Planners has reserved two future 20-mile-high flights on the high altitude balloon Spaceship Neptune, being built by the Florida-based company Space Perspective.
Cruise Planners has reserved two full capsules scheduled to fly in 2025 & 2027 respectively on Spaceship Neptune.
Spaceship Neptune will differ from other spacecraft by being attached and secured to the SpaceBalloon for the entirety of the flight, making it a safe and seamless journey for the traveler. Other vessels separate mid-flight and transfer to different flight systems. According to Space Perspective, Spaceship Neptune will be lifted to space by the SpaceBalloon, powered by renewable hydrogen with no rockets and no carbon footprint. Guests won’t have the jarring blastoff that is typical of space travel, but instead will ascend steadily at 12 mph, making the experience accessible for anyone who is able to fly with a commercial airline.
Space Perspective is one of three balloon companies now planning such high altitude flights. Ticket prices will range from $50K to $125K, depending on company. At the moment Space Perspective is charging the most, but expect that to change as the competition heats up.
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Graphic of Space Perspective’s Neptune capsule.
The travel agency Cruise Planners has reserved two future 20-mile-high flights on the high altitude balloon Spaceship Neptune, being built by the Florida-based company Space Perspective.
Cruise Planners has reserved two full capsules scheduled to fly in 2025 & 2027 respectively on Spaceship Neptune.
Spaceship Neptune will differ from other spacecraft by being attached and secured to the SpaceBalloon for the entirety of the flight, making it a safe and seamless journey for the traveler. Other vessels separate mid-flight and transfer to different flight systems. According to Space Perspective, Spaceship Neptune will be lifted to space by the SpaceBalloon, powered by renewable hydrogen with no rockets and no carbon footprint. Guests won’t have the jarring blastoff that is typical of space travel, but instead will ascend steadily at 12 mph, making the experience accessible for anyone who is able to fly with a commercial airline.
Space Perspective is one of three balloon companies now planning such high altitude flights. Ticket prices will range from $50K to $125K, depending on company. At the moment Space Perspective is charging the most, but expect that to change as the competition heats up.
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.
“expect that to change as the competition heats up”
… if the competition can get around the patent-office. The July presser boasts of several new technologies. A competitor will either have to pay through the proboscis or else must come up with new windows, new capsules, new balloons, a new landing-system, maybe new thermal-control (if they want humans on board).
Or, you know, go to court and/or lobby a Senator. That seems to be the American Way nowadays.
“According to Space Perspective, Spaceship Neptune will be lifted to space by the SpaceBalloon, powered by renewable hydrogen ”
Renewable Hydrogen?!? How about flammable hydrogen? I get that hydrogen is only flammable after the introduction of oxygen and then a spark, but leaks and sparks happen, as the Hindenburg discovered
I wonder what precautions (design, operations, combinations of the two) they are taking to NOT become Hindenburg 2? It is a short jump and a long fall from 20 miles up.
Doubting Thomas: hydrogen-balloons and airships were in use for decades before 1933 when hydrogen was well understood as a burny gas. They rarely had the spectacular failure of Hindenberg. They were even used in war: if it was all that easy to blow them up (rather than puncture them) then the actual real-life Herr Hindenberg and the rest of the Kaiser’s command-staff would have retired them immediately. Casey Handmer has blogged on schemes to return the zeppelin to glory with newer fabrics and overall technology.
Looking up the wiki page, one worry for future balloons stands out: lightning. The weather better be excellent and the ship better have a plan for static discharge, especially up high and dry.