SpaceX sent three millionaire businessmen and their accompanying astronauts to the International Space Station for 55 million euros each. It was the company’s first private charter flight after flying there for two years with only NASA astronauts. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has offered trips on its New Shepard rocket for up to 28m euros, and Axiom Space also wants to sell 10-day trips to the International Space Station for 55m per seat.

Space tourism is a reality, but not everyone can access it because not everyone can afford to see the world from the outside. However, a Japanese startup wants to end this disparity and plans to launch commercial flights into the stratosphere in helium capsules this year.

Project. Iwaya Giken wants to make space more accessible, but her stratospheric flight design looks like it popped out of an amusement park. Unlike a rocket, this Japanese startup wants to send humans to the edge of space using a globe and a helium-filled balloon. It’s also worth noting that the passengers won’t be completely in space, as the machine will only rise to the middle of the stratosphere, which is much more than when an airplane takes off. Enough to think about the curvature of our planet and the vacuum of space.

The starting price of the trip will be around 180,000 euros, but Iwaya Giken wants to bring the price down to a few thousand euros soon. The good news is that passengers won’t need to go through any special training, as it’s not a rocket or space plane. It’s safe and inexpensive. We want to democratize space,” explains the company. First trip by the end of 2023.

how to ship Small, very small. But it’s big enough to fit two crew members to be kept in their seat belts. In total, this hermetic cabin, called the T-10 Earther, is one and a half meters in diameter and is made of aluminum and steel. It is also pressurized and heated, and the armored and transparent glass provides a panoramic view of space and earth.

How does it work? with helium. The globe will hang from a helium balloon that will lift it about 25 kilometers above Earth, where Earth will be perfectly visible from the outside. That is, it will still be far from the 100 km high Karman line that marks the boundary of outer space. The journey will take about two hours to climb and an hour to fly (for the public’s amusement) before descending. And the machine can be used repeatedly.

a trend. This Japanese startup is not the first to come up with a similar space tourism concept. Arizona-based World View Enterprises is working on its own stratospheric balloon ride with an estimated cost of €50,000 per passenger. Instead of the tiny Japanese two-seater, World View’s capsule is much larger and the journey will take between six and 12 hours, according to the company.

Also, Space Perspective is developing a luxury capsule attached to a balloon to transport passengers to the stratosphere for 125,000 euros. It even offers cocktails while passengers enjoy the show. But even in Spain we have companies that want to take advantage of this business. Zero 2 InfinityA company that uses balloons to send payloads into space wants to get into space tourism and launch a capsule to a height of 36 kilometers.