Space Perspective Is Preparing For its First Crewed Flight in 2025

A growing number of private companies are working on a logistically complex goal: taking paying customers into space. In this field, there’s one entity that stands out for its choice to try a very different business model: Space Perspective, which plans to transport passengers into space in a relatively spacious capsule via balloon. The appeal of a more measured, leisurely trip high above the planet’s surface is understandable — and it sounds like its first official voyage will be underway sometime in 2025.

That’s what the company’s co-founder Taber MacCallum and interim CEO Michael Savage told The Points Guy’s Tarah Chieffi for a recent article. MacCallum shared that a normal Space Perspective trip will involve two hours to ascend and two hours to descend.

How much time will be spent in space itself? MacCallum told Chieffi that the process of a typical flight would involve the capsule “floating on top of the Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 feet for a couple of hours.” (By comparison, Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting 2012 jump came from a height of 128,100 feet.)

Does that count as space? “It’s essentially a vacuum, and you have all of the thermal, radiation and navigation concerns of an aircraft,” MacCallum said in the interview. (If you’d ever like to go down an internet rabbit hole, attempting to figure out just where space begins is a good way to do it.) For regulatory purposes, though, Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune does meet the FAA’s conditions for classification as a spacecraft.

This Samsonite Carry-On Literally Went to Space

Proxis is the brand’s lightest, and most durable, luggage to date

When the first crewed Spaceship Neptune flight takes place, there’s one more aspect of it that’s been announced: Richard Branson will be among the pilots. MacCallum made that announcement in October of this year.

“We’re delighted by Richard’s decision to join Jane and I as co-pilot on the first crewed flight, leveraging his deep experience in ballooning to ensure a successful maiden voyage,” MacCallum said in a statement. As for when next year that flight will take place, well — for the answer to that, we’ll need to stay tuned.