You Can Book Your First Space Trip For a Mere $180K

Move over SpaceX, there's a new player in space tourism.

Space tourism is about to get low-tech thanks to a Japanese startup that wants to fly people into low-orbit space with a helium balloon. 

Iwaya Giken, which is based in Sapporo in northern Japan, has been working on affordable space tourism since 2012, and says it has developed an airtight two-seat cabin and a balloon capable of rising 15 miles above the earth's surface. 

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“It’s safe, economical and gentle for people,” Iwaya told reporters, according to the AP. “The idea is to make space tourism for everyone.”

Initially, flights on the balloon will cost about $180,000, but the company aims to eventually bring that figure down to the tens of thousands of dollars. 

More thrifty space tourists may want a ride on the balloon rather than pay the $55 million rival SpaceX charged each of the three businessmen it carried to the International Space Station on one of its rockets last year. 

The balloons will be able to carry a pilot and a passenger, and take off from a balloon port in Hokkaido. The vehicle will rise for two hours before reaching its height of 15 miles above earth, and stay there for one hour before beginning a one-hour descent back to earth. 

Applications for a viewing ride opened this week and will continue through the end of August. The first five passengers selected will be announced in October with flights going one week apart, weather permitting. 

At 15 miles above the earth, one can clearly see the curvature of the great blue marble, so this could mark the end of the flat earth conspiracy era.