Hold a spot in your travel plans—a trip into space may be just around the corner. If you have a big budget for a very short vacation, that is.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origins, the two companies that have been pre-selling tickets for a space ride, both say the day is drawing closer, perhaps as early as the end of this year, with six passengers on each flight.
The two companies have very different approaches, but both offer only a short ride, about two hours, into space for fares starting at $250,000. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic uses an airplane-like craft that is launched by a carrier rocket and lands at a “spaceport,” while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origins uses a capsule attached to a rocket; the capsule returns to earth held by three parachutes.
If a quick up-and-back is not your idea of a space vacation, you can hold out while Boeing and Space-X finish developing their new capsules, which are intended to transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. Both have plans to make back some of the development cost by taking wealthy tourists along to the ISS, as was done a few times several years ago by the space shuttles.
