For apparent reasons, cruises aren’t the best options for travel during this period. However, a new kind of cruise is poised to be welcomed with open arms, especially if you’re obsessed with anything to do with NASA or SpaceX. It also floats—but instead of traveling laterally, it goes upwards beyond this planet.
The next venture to commercial space travel involves a trailblazing balloon by American startup Space Perspective, which sees your ordinary earthly travels and raises them 100,000 feet.
The hydrogen-filled high-altitude space balloon, called Neptune, is designed to take adventure-seeking tourists on cruises around the stratosphere. It will carry a pod with a capacity of up to eight passengers, excluding the pilot, aboard a six-hour expedition to the edge of space, before heading back to Earth.
The capsule, conceptualized by transport design studio PriestmanGoode, will let travelers take in stellar views, as well as capture envy-inducing photos for Instagram, from its floor-to-ceiling windows.
A typical journey will begin at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before ascending for two hours to reach “over three times higher” than a commercial airliner will go. The sky stays dark during this part of the expedition, allowing you to gaze at stars “like you’ve never before seen them,” Space Perspective describes.
The Neptune hot air balloon will then sail along this void of space to wait for the sun to rise over Earth, projecting “rainbow colors of lights” and “illuminating the thin, bright blue line of our atmosphere.” Passengers will observe the celestial light show from a “completely inky black” sky.
Finally, the balloon will make its gentle return home—which will take another two hours—before landing in the middle of the Atlantic, where travelers will be picked up via a ship.
Unfortunately, the experience won’t come cheap. Tickets are anticipated to set you back around US$125,000, though they’ll still be less than half the price of a Virgin Galactic flight.
The other not-so-exciting bit is that space-traveling hopefuls will have to wait until 2024 before they can finally embark on this journey. Before that, Space Perspective intends to kick off Neptune’s first test flight in early 2021 without passengers, and then make its debut crewed trip in 2023.
Today’s world needs a fresh perspective more than ever... enter #SpacePerspective, the off-world travel company dedicated to expanding your view of the world, for the betterment of us all. From #space, we are not seen as many, but we are seen as ONE. Coming soon...#ONEWorldpic.twitter.com/ofhkUIwLOv
— Space Perspective (@SpacePerspectiv) June 16, 2020