Founded in 2019, Space Perspective plans to send tourists to the edge of the Earth’s upper atmosphere in a capsule propelled by a high-altitude balloon the size of the Statue of Liberty.
Space Perspective says its views will be comparable to those experienced by passengers on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, which also have plans to propel paying customers into space. However, there are differences. Space Perspective passengers won’t experience G-Force, zero-gravity, or rocket propulsion, for example, and it reaches a lower altitude than its competitors.
“We’re passionate about fundamentally changing the way people access space – both to perform much-needed research to benefit life on Earth and to affect how we view and connect with our planet,” says founder and CEO, Jane Poynter.
“Today, it is more crucial than ever to see Earth as an interconnected planet, a spaceship for all humanity and our global biosphere. This expanded view of our world is the life-transforming perspective astronauts speak of when they see Earth in space. This is the Space Perspective.”
So how does Space Perspective compare to Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic? Let’s take a look.
Space Perspective passengers arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, have a safety briefing and a walkthrough of the facilities, and then prepare for a six-hour space flight. The capsule goes up at nighttime, allowing passengers to experience the blackness of space, before the sun rises allowing those on board to witness the curvature of the Earth and the thin blue line of the atmosphere. Virgin Galactic’s space flight lasts around 90 minutes to two hours, whereas Blue Origin’s rocket-propelled experience is far shorter – around 11 minutes...