From Wikivoyage
Jump to: navigation, search




After the Space Race ended, a new sense of reality set in. The wild dreams of the 60s and 70s died, and humanity turned its attention Earthward again. Space travel beyond Earth's orbit became the exclusive domain of mankind's robotic explorers, and high-profile tragedies both reaching and returning from orbit provided sobering reminders of the risks of space travel. By the end of the 20th century, travel into space was still exclusively the domain of governmental organizations.

However, necessity changed the situation with the dawn of the 21st century. Desperate for funds, the Russian Space Agency began to sell seats on Soyuz launches. Businessman Dennis Tito became the first pay-to-fly space tourist in April 2001, and since then a handful have followed in his footsteps.

Get in[edit]

Although physical fitness remains a concern, the main obstacle to reaching space is the depth of your wallet. In increasing order of both cost and distance from the Earth:

On the Earth[edit]


  • Weßling (outside Munich), Germany. The European Space Agency's Columbus Control Centre is open to the public depending on mission status.



  • Zero Gravity Corporation5275 Arville Street, Suite 116, Las Vegas, NV 89118, USA, toll-free: +1-800-937-6480. Flights from Las Vegas (Nevada) and Cape Canaveral (Florida) on a modified Boeing 727 with a large compartment suitable for weightless tumbling, including several brief simulations of freefall, Lunar gravity (1/6 Terran), and Martian gravity (1/3 Terran). $3,675/person.
  • MiGFlugCH-6404 Greppen, Dorfstrasse, Switzerland +41 44 500 50 10, e-mail: . Offering flights with Russian Ilyushin 76MDK (Special training airplane for Cosmonauts) departing from Moscow and also zero-g flights in the U.S. with a Boeing 727-200. Zero-g flight: €3,500/person.

Edge of space[edit]

Flights at altitudes of less than 100 km do not qualify as true space flight, but it is possible to see the curvature of the Earth from altitudes as (comparatively) low as 25 km.

  • MiGFlugCH-6404 Greppen, Dorfstrasse, Switzerland +41 44 500 50 10, e-mail: . Offering supersonic flights with a Russian MiG-31 Foxhound jet up to 25,000 meters, departing from Russia and supersonic flights with a Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum jet up to 23,000 meters, departing from Russia. Also offers supersonic flights with an English Electric Lightning jet up to 23,000 meters, departing from South Africa. Edge of space stratospheric flight: €16,500/person.

Sub-orbital flight[edit]


  • Virgin Galactic. Founded by who else but Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic is selling tickets for sub-orbital flights on SpaceShipTwo for a cool $250,000 a pop. Flights will go up to 110 km and reach speeds of Mach 3, but while total flight time is 2.5 hours, weightlessness will only last for about six minutes. The company has placed an order for five second-generation spaceships from Scaled Composites, the builders of SpaceShipOne. Initial flights will take place from Mojave, California (US), but later flights will move to Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (US) and Kiruna, Sweden. Departures will first be weekly, and eventually climbing to once or twice daily. Three-day training will be available on site. Originally planned to start in December 2014, the project has been delayed by an October 31, 2014 incident in which SpaceShipTwo broke up and crashed in the Mojave desert, killing one of its two pilots.
  • Xcor Lynx. Selling $95,000 tickets for suborbital flights already, but they haven't even managed a test flight yet. They currently plan to begin testing in 2014, with commercial flights at a later date.
  • Boeing. Boeing announced the CST-100, a sub-orbital plane capable of suborbital flight and 7-passengers capacity in "competitive prices" as they have said.

Orbital flight[edit]

A view of Europe from low Earth orbit

All that sub-orbital stuff is pretty nifty, but these days no one's really ready to accept that you were "in space" until you've been in orbit around the Earth. There's no single altitude for this (it depends on your orbital velocity), but due to atmospheric drag it's only practical above 350 km. Commonly known as Low Earth Orbit, this is currently the exclusive domain of Russian Soyuz vessels, Chinese Shenzhou craft, and the International Space Station. This itinerary is likely the most expensive in the world.

  • Space Adventures8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Suite 1000, Vienna, VA 22182, USA, toll-free: +1-888-85-SPACE (77223), e-mail: . Space Adventures has organized orbital flights to the International Space Station (ISS). Around $35 million per person will buy you basic training and a launch on a Soyuz vessel from the Russian Cosmodrome at Baikonur to the ISS. Participants must also fulfill certain physical fitness requirements to ensure their and the mission's safety.
  • Private firms SpaceX and Boeing are to begin transporting astronauts to the International Space Station in 2017; Russian spacecraft had filled this gap since the 2011 end of the US space shuttle programme.

Trans-orbital flight[edit]

See Moon



Earthrise, as viewed from moon orbit


  • Space dive. Orbital Outfitters is designing Sub-orbital Space Suit One, a suit to be worn by crew on sub-orbital flights and potentially suitable for "space diving" from 120,000 ft.




Contrary to popular belief, Tang was not invented for the US space programme, although NASA did carry it aboard the Apollo missions.

Water tends to be scarce (as it is heavy and must be brought from Earth), so International Space Station machinery recycles water aggressively. Everything from fuel cell water to humidity and waste water is efficiently recovered.


  • Bigelow Aerospace. In 2006 and 2007, they successfully tested the first prototype of an inflatable space hotel. However, as of 2013, transportation to any proposed space station remains problematic. A 10–60 day "live and work visit", once available, is expected to cost between $26–37 million.

Stay safe[edit]


The traveller should be wary of purchasing space flights on projects that haven't yet begun. If there are complications with the project or the company goes under, you might lose your money and your plans.

Stay healthy[edit]

Exercise is required in order to stay healthy in zero gravity.

Go next[edit]

Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth

What goes up must come down—at least for now.

