An Arizona startup company has announced plans for a balloon ride to the stratosphere, which would allow passengers to get approximately two hours of space-like views 19 miles above Earth.
The privately owned World View, an offshoot company of Paragon Space Development, said it will start selling tickets for $75,000 per person within the next couple of months, said Chairwoman and President Jane Poynter.
The company will start flight tests to demonstrate vehicles before the end of this year in Arizona. They hope to be flying passengers by 2016 years, according to Reuters.
At first, around six passengers and two pilots will be allowed to board the pressurized capsule, which is still under development. The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to decide if the capsule meets the same safety requirements as other manned spacecraft orbiting Earth.
"At Paragon's intended altitude, water and blood boil, and an unprotected person would rapidly experience fatal decompression," the FAA said, according to Reuters.
The FAA said it has yet to take a position as to whether an altitude of around 30 kilometers counts as outer space. They have said however that Paragon's capsule will need to be able to operate in space.
Rides aboard its competitor, the "SpaceShipTwo," which is a suborbital six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle owned by Virgin Galactic, is expected to reach approximately 68 miles.
"World View capsules would be propelled by a 40 million cubic-foot (1.1 million cubic-meter) helium balloon and a steerable parafoil, an inflatable wing-shaped parachute," Reuters said. "They should take about 90 minutes to two hours to reach peak altitude, more than twice as high as where commercial jets fly."
At press time, about 650 people have put down deposits or paid for rides for the SpaceShipTwo, which is undergoing testing at Scaled Composites facility in California.
Virgin Galactic, which is an offshoot of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, is looking to start passenger service in the summer of 2014.
"The balloon you're under is the thickness of a dry cleaner bag. It's very thin material by necessity to get you so high. That's where the technical risk lies. The risks of decompression of the spacecraft or life-support systems failures are really pretty small. We've got lots of redundant systems and we can return to lower altitudes pretty quickly," Paragon co-founder and Chief Executive Taber MacCallum said to Reuters.
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