Chinese Startup Offers Trips to Edge of Space for an Absolute Bargain, Sells Out in Minutes

Touring to area might quickly get rather a lot cheaper.

Discount Spacement

Chinese language area startup Deep Blue Aerospace recently took to social media to announce the sale of tickets for a 12-minute journey to the sting of area, which might happen as quickly as 2027.

Tickets have been in scorching demand, with the corporate promoting two tickets for $210,000 apiece inside a 20-minute stay stream on the e-commerce platform Taobao. The corporate plans to promote extra tickets someday subsequent month.

Whereas which will sound like some huge cash, it is a fraction of the $600,000 it prices for the same flight on board Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo area airplane. And hovering to the sting of area on board Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket has been rumored to cost more than twice that per seat.

However Deep Blue Aerospace nonetheless has rather a lot to show. Up to now, the corporate has solely begun testing a vertical take-off and touchdown of its liquid oxygen-kerosene “Nebula-1” rocket. Final month, the corporate’s rocket suffered an anomaly, leading to a large fireball on the launch pad.

The corporate, nevertheless, claims in a statement that early subsequent yr, its rocket will make it to an altitude of at the very least 62 miles and again in a single piece, a lofty aim that might set the stage for China’s nascent industrial area business.

Dangerous Enterprise

In its press launch, Deep Blue Aerospace admitted that it “understands profoundly the complexity and dangers,” as translated by the South China Morning Post, of sending human passengers to the sting of area, vowing to finish dozens of trials within the subsequent two years.

The corporate’s crew module, which bears a more-than-just-striking resemblance to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in recently shared concept art, can seat as much as six passengers and options six home windows. The corporate claims it may be reused as much as 50 instances.

However when or if the rocket will ever make it off the bottom, to the sting of area, and again stays to be seen.

Nonetheless, a number of different Chinese language firms want to provide very comparable journeys, together with CAS Area, which is planning to promote tickets for anywhere from $281,000 to $421,000.

Extra on China’s area ambitions: Watch Astronauts Give a Rare Tour of China’s Luxurious Space Station