Space Perspective prepares for tourist balloon rides to edge of space
Space Perspective's Marine Spaceport Voyager arrived at Port Canaveral carrying the Spaceship Neptune fresh off the heels of a successful uncrewed flight test off the coast of St. Petersburg, on Thursday.
On Sunday, Neptune floated up thousands of feet near the edge of space beneath a giant Space Balloon.
Space Perspective co-founder Jane Poynter told us, "We were able to send a fully operational Spaceship Neptune through its full flight launched from M.S.Voyager at sea, went up to 100,000ft, got this most amazing view of the planet from up there, gently came down and splashed in the Gulf of Mexico."
Space Perspectives is preparing for future 6-hour tourism flights, which will launch from the M.S. Voyager and splash down off the Florida. A seat aboard a future flight will cost you 125,000 dollars and 1800 tickets have already been sold.
Poynter added, "So, we've got a number of test flights that we need to do without people so that we really test all of the systems, all the backup systems, and then we'll start sending crewed flights up with our engineers." Space Perspectives hopes to begin commercial flights in the next twelve to eighteen months.
