If the idea of strapping yourself into a rocket and blasting into space for a few minutes of weightlessness is not appealing, how about a potentially transformative, slow journey to the top of the atmosphere?
Space Perspective, the latest private company to offer tourist flights to the edge of space, is taking a new approach to space tourism through the use of a high-altitude balloon. This would carry up to eight passengers in a gondola for a six-hour journey up about 30 kilometres into the stratosphere and back.
The company claims this altitude is the edge of space, although the more common definition is known as the Kármán Line at 100 kilometres, which is reached by the Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin tourist rockets.
Still, the balloon ride will take people high enough to see the curve of the Earth against the blackness of space and the thin blue line of our atmosphere. It’s a view that often shifts the perspectives of astronauts and space tourists who’ve been in space.
Astronauts returning from space commonly report that this view of the planet — where international borders and the political strife within them disappears — has changed the way they view human society.
Psychologists call it the “overview effect,” a self-transcending sense of awe that can make people see more value in working toward the common good than pursuing individual wants.
Jane Poynter, the founder of Space Perspective, said in a 2023 podcast interview that this perspective shift is at the core of her company’s goal: to offer an experience that might inspire people to solve today’s grand challenges.
The company plans to use hydrogen-filled balloons that will launch from a ship off the Florida coast. Publicity material says the ride will be so be smooth passengers can get out of their seats, walk around, take in the view from floor-to-ceiling windows, and enjoy gourmet meals or a drink at the bar during the six-hour experience.
This is quite a contrast to a rocket launch, where you are strapped into a seat, experience the pressure as high as three- to five-times your body weight, depending on the company, weightlessness at the top, which can cause nausea, as well as the shock of landing back on Earth. Balloon flight, by comparison, is more like floating on a magic carpet.
Following a successful unmanned test flight last month, the company plans to fly its first tourists in 2025. Richard Branson, an investor in Space Perspective and the founder of Virgin Galactic, will co-pilot the inaugural flight.
The entrepreneur is no stranger to hot-air ballooning, having set world records of his own as the first to cross the Atlantic by balloon in 1987, and the first to cross the Pacific in 1991.
The beauty of balloon-borne flight is you don’t have to be in supreme physical health to do it. Passengers will feel like they are in an extremely high-altitude lounge looking down on the Earth.
It’s also considerably less expensive: around $170,000 compared to more than $800,000 for Virgin Galactic. Poynter suggested in a podcast interview that she hopes to eventually lower the price with tiered flight experiences to make it accessible for more people.
Poynter said she believes that if more people have the opportunity to look down on the Earth from this perspective, perhaps the overview effect experienced by astronauts will become more widespread. The thinness of the atmosphere, the blackness of space and the beauty of our blue planet have all inspired all who have seen it from above.
A better appreciation of the planet from any new perspective — especially one that creates near-zero emissions, as the company’s website claims its high-altitude adventures will be — is always a good thing.