This yr marks the 250th anniversary of the primary human hopping aboard a hot air balloon. But Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier solely hovered about 85 ft above the bottom, so it’s protected to say he can be shocked at what his nation’s trendy denizens are planning. As CNN reported on Thursday, a French firm known as Zephalto goals to start “edge of space” hot air balloon vacationer sojourns as early as subsequent yr—for $130,000 a seat.
After ponying up the hefty price ticket, passengers will board Zephalto’s pressurized capsule, Celeste, which is connected to an enormous, helium-filled stratospheric balloon. Over the course of roughly ninety minutes, the balloon will ascend at 4 meters per second to an altitude of 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles). Once on the fringe of area, vacationers will get pleasure from a elaborate meal throughout their three-hour hover time in entrance of 7-square-meter window views of the Earth’s curvature earlier than descending again all the way down to terra firma.
[Related: How will NASA keep up with space tourism?]
Other high-profile area tourism ventures equivalent to Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic journey a lot larger than the capabilities of even a high-end hot air balloon equivalent to Zephalto’s. In July 2021, Virgin Galactic’s founder, Richard Branson, soared 86 km above Earth. Just one week later, Blue Origin took its co-founder and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos above the Karman Line, the internationally acknowledged (if considerably disputed) boundary for outer area.
Unlike these high-profile area tourism ventures, nonetheless, Zephalto payments itself as being a way more eco-friendly various. According to its official description web page, solely 26.6 kg of CO2 are purportedly wanted for a single journey—the bottom quantity required for an area flight, says the corporate, or akin to “as little as the production of a pair of denim trousers.” By comparability, a single suborbital rocket launch can put out as a lot as 300 tons of CO2 into the higher environment throughout its journey.
[Related: Blue Origin brought the first official tourists to space.]
As reservations shortly fill for the journeys—Zephalto informed CNN it’s already booked out till mid-2025. The firm’s founder not too long ago defined they had been working carefully with France’s area company, CNES, alongside companions at Airbus to make sure all security and logistical laws are met. Once in full swing, Zephalto goals to launch as many as 60 flights per yr, every with six passengers alongside two pilots.
And if the six-hour-total journey and fancy meal aren’t sufficient to promote you on a $130,000 ticket, Zephalto says it’s throwing in complementary psychological counseling forward of the outing to assist cope with what’s referred to as the “overview effect,” the existential weight that reportedly comes from viewing the whole lot of Earth from high above its floor.