SpaceTRC / Space Age / Space tourism
From four minutes of weightlessness to a polar orbit.
“Space tourism” covers two very different experiences. A suborbital flight takes you to about 100 km and brings you back within minutes. An orbital flight circles Earth for days. The difference is not altitude but speed and energy.
- New Shepard passengers
- 9838 flights · paused January 2026
- Fram2 inclination
- 90°Over both poles
- Polaris Dawn altitude
- ≈1,400 kmHighest since Apollo
- Turkish astronauts flown
- 2Gezeravcı and Atasever, 2024
01 / The key difference
Reaching space is easy; staying there is hard
To climb straight up to 100 km and fall back you need about 1.4 km/s. To stay in orbit at that height you need about 7.8 km/s sideways. Because energy grows with the square of speed, the gap exceeds a factor of thirty. That is why New Shepard flies on an 18-metre rocket while Crew Dragon rides a 70-metre Falcon 9.
Up, then back down
The vehicle traces an arc like a ball thrown upwards. After engine cutoff, passengers float for 3–4 minutes and see the curve of Earth. A New Shepard flight lasts about 10–11 minutes in total.
Falling around the planet
The vehicle moves fast enough to circle Earth about every 90 minutes. It is always falling but keeps missing the ground. Passengers stay weightless for days and see 16 sunrises a day.
02 / Interactive
Energy calculator: suborbital versus orbital
Change the altitude. The calculator compares, per kilogram, the energy needed to climb to that height and stop with the energy needed to circle at that height.
Model: two-body spherical Earth, μ = 398,600.4418 km³/s², R = 6,378.137 km. Air drag, Earth’s rotation and gravity losses are ignored; real rockets spend considerably more energy. 1 MJ/kg equals 1 km²/s².
03 / Providers
Who flies where, and for how long?
| Vehicle | Company | Type | Apogee | Duration | Status (Nov 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Shepard | Blue Origin | Vertical launch; capsule lands under parachutes | ≈106 km | ≈10–11 min | Paused for at least two years in January 2026 |
| VSS Unity | Virgin Galactic | Rocket plane released from a carrier aircraft | ≈85–90 km | ≈1 hour | Retired June 2024 |
| Delta class (Apeiron) | Virgin Galactic | Next-generation rocket plane | ≈85–90 km | ≈1 hour | First captive-carry flight 28 Oct 2026; passenger flights targeted for spring 2027 |
| Crew Dragon | SpaceX | Free-flying orbital mission | ≈400–1,400 km | 3–5 days | Active |
| Crew Dragon + ISS | Axiom Space | Private astronaut mission to the station | ≈400 km | ≈2–3 weeks | Ax-5 no earlier than January 2027 |
Prices are mostly undisclosed. Blue Origin asked applicants for a 150,000-dollar deposit; reported prices for Axiom station missions run to tens of millions of dollars per seat.
Why New Shepard stopped
Blue Origin suspended suborbital tourism for at least two years and redirected resources to its Blue Moon lander for NASA’s Artemis programme. Before the pause, the programme had flown 38 times and carried 98 people to space.
Virgin Galactic’s pause
After its last VSS Unity flight, Galactic 07, the company paused flights to move to Delta-class ships. It says they can fly up to twice a week with a lifetime of over 500 missions.
Private orbital missions
Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn and Fram2 made orbital tourism possible without docking at a station, each chasing a “first”: first civilian crew, first commercial spacewalk, first polar orbit.
04 / Videos
Views from above the atmosphere
Videos are embedded from the companies’ official channels and load only when tapped.
05 / Türkiye
Turkish astronauts: two flights, two paths
Türkiye’s two astronauts flew in 2024 on two very different commercial flights: one spent weeks in orbit, the other made a minutes-long suborbital research flight.
Alper Gezeravcı
Launched on 18 January 2024 aboard a Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon, he ran experiments prepared by Turkish scientists on the International Space Station. The crew splashed down off Florida on 9 February 2024.
Tuva Cihangir Atasever
He flew on 8 June 2024 from Spaceport America in New Mexico aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, reached about 90 km and ran seven scientific experiments during roughly three minutes of free fall.
The next big step is uncrewed: TÜBİTAK UZAY’s AYAP-1 lunar orbiter is planned to launch on a Falcon 9 in 2027.
06 / The future
Health, safety and what comes next
What the body goes through
Passengers feel about 3–5 g at launch, and briefly more on a suborbital descent. Space sickness is common in the first days in orbit; long missions bring bone and muscle loss, radiation exposure and fluid shifts.
Who licenses it?
In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licenses commercial crewed launches. Passengers sign an “informed consent” acknowledging that the government has not certified the vehicle as safe.
What’s next
Axiom’s fifth station mission is planned for January 2027 at the earliest, and Virgin Galactic expects Delta-class passenger flights in 2027. Several companies are building commercial space stations for the post-ISS era.