Florida Company Wants to Fly People to Space In Hot Air Balloons
Get ready to join the 19-mile-high club.
It sounds like a pipe dream from the early 20th Century, not the 2020s–taking a balloon into space. But if their plans pan out, Space Perspective will soon be floating wedding parties and office meetings up, up, and away in their beautiful balloon.
The Florida-based travel startup will take passengers up to the very edge of space in a balloon they’ve dubbed Neptune.
The space balloon carries a pressurized capsule with an 8-passenger capacity which Space Perspective plans to launch from the Kennedy Space Center at NASA.
Passengers will reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (just shy of 19 miles) after a two-hour ride. Once there the journey will be all about drifting above the planet taking in vistas normally reserved for astronauts.
Only Neptune passengers will have an onboard bar and restroom for convenience’s sake. After the trip is over, passengers will end their six-hour ride with a (hopefully gentle) ocean landing. From there, they’ll board a boat to get back to land.
In a press release Space Perspective Founder and Co-CEO Jane Poynter said the company is “committed to fundamentally changing the way people have access to space – both to perform much-needed research to benefit life on Earth and to affect how we view and connect with our planet.”
Space Perspective plans to book events such as weddings as well as trips for privately-funded scientific research.
The company says they’ll begin missions in soon. For more information, see thespaceperspective.com.
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