Passenger balloons into space will fly in 2021

Spaceship Neptune's cabin is fitted with a hydrogen balloon that can carry eight people up to the stratosphere to see the Earth from the edge of space.

Spaceship Neptune soars due to the uplift of the balloon. (Photo: Space).

Space Perspective in Florida, USA, is planning to bring paid passengers and research equipment to the stratosphere with a pressurized airship under a balloon called Spaceship Neptune. The vehicle is expected to make its first test flights early next year.

"We are working to change the way people access space, and to conduct the necessary research that will benefit life on Earth and affect the way we observe and engage. planet ", co-founder and CEO Jane Poynter of Space Perspective shared on June 18.

Flight simulation of Spaceship Neptune. 

The Spaceship Neptune can accommodate a pilot and 8 passengers. Inside the cabin are seats, bars, bathrooms and large windows that allow passengers to observe the Earth in the black background of the universe. The ship will take off from the old Space Shuttle Landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Spaceship Neptune will fly east across the Atlantic Ocean during winter flights and west via Mexico Bay in the summer in the windy direction.

Spaceship Neptune will take about two hours to reach a maximum height of about 30,000 m, lifted gently by a 200 m high balloon filled with hydrogen. Explaining the choice of lift gas to be hydrogen instead of helium, Taber MacCallum, co-founder and CEO of Space Perspective, said that helium is becoming increasingly difficult to find due to its heavy use in medical applications and rocket launch. fire.

The ship will fly two hours in the stratosphere and take another two hours to descend. Spaceship Neptune will land in the sea and will be pulled ashore by the recovery vessel, similar to SpaceX's Crew Drgon. Spaceship Neptune will be reused but still needs new balloons for each flight. According to MacCallum and Poynter, the ticket price for the first balloon experience was around $ 125,000.