Stratospheric Balloon Tourism: Future of Space Travel

Stratospheric balloon tourism offers a unique, gentle space experience with panoramic views, aiming to launch commercial flights by 2025.

### Stratospheric Balloon Tourism: A New Frontier in Space Travel
* 🎈  World View, Space Perspective, and Zephalto are among the companies developing stratospheric balloon tourism, offering flights to **altitudes of 15-19 miles above the Earth's surface**.
* 🌍  These flights will provide passengers with a **unique view of Earth**, with tickets priced between **$50,000 and $184,000**, significantly cheaper than traditional space tourism options.
* 🚀  Unlike rocket-powered space tourism, stratospheric balloon rides will not offer **weightlessness**, but will provide a **comfortable, airplane-like experience** with amenities such as **in-flight dining and Wi-Fi**.
* 🎈  The companies are confident in the safety of their technology, with **redundant life support systems and emergency parachutes** in place in case of balloon failure.
* ⚖️  Regulation of commercial space tourism is still evolving, with companies following existing aviation standards while awaiting **specific space tourism regulations**.
* 💰  The choice of lift gas (**helium vs. hydrogen**) is a key decision for these companies, with each option having its own **advantages and safety considerations**.
* 🔮  Despite competition from other companies entering the market, industry leaders believe that **space tourism, including stratospheric balloon flights**, is a **growing and sustainable sector**.
* 🌐  The companies are targeting a wide range of launch locations, including iconic landmarks like the Grand Canyon, and plan to offer a **new type of experience for adventurous travelers**.

So we're standing in front of a mockup of our space
tourism capsule. The capsule itself is designed to carry eight
customers and two crew into the stratosphere. The actual capsules inside of the capsule, there will
be a center bar where people can gather. And then, of course, there will be a bathroom aboard
the capsule, considering these are going to be six-hour-long flights. Ryan Hartman is the CEO of World View. The Tucson, Arizona-based company was founded in 2012
and is one of a number of startups hoping to hoist tourists to the stratosphere using pressurized
capsules and massive gas-filled balloons. Since its inception, the company has raised around
$100 million. We have about 100 employees here. One of the key features of our headquarters is the
balloon farm, which is where we're at right now, where we manufacture all of our balloons. The largest balloon that we manufacture is for our
space tourism business.

It's about 600ft long, which is the length of this entire table. World View says that when fully inflated, its tourism balloons will be big enough to fit an entire football stadium on the inside and be able to lift over 10,000 pounds. But World View is not the only company working on this technology. Founded in 2019, Florida Space Perspective has raised around $80 million to date and recently revealed the design of its spaceship Neptune capsule. Spaceship Neptune is going up to 100,000ft, approximately 20 miles above the Earth, where you can see that curvature of the Earth. You'll be able to see roughly 450 miles in every direction. In Europe, France-based Zephalto has raised around $21.7 million since the company's founding in 2016. We'll show the overview effect, the very fact to see the Earth from above, from the darkness of space.

to see the curvature of the Earth in its blue halo. And that's something very moving. Recent polls show that only 35% of Americans say they
would be interested in traveling on a private spacecraft to orbit Earth. For the remaining 65% of people, there could be
another option traveling to the stratosphere. To learn more about this emerging market, CNBC spoke
to three companies about their vision and progress towards making stratospheric balloon tourism a
reality. Commercial space flight is becoming more and more
common, with companies including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all having flown paying customers
into space over the last several years. But unlike SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic,
these stratospheric balloon companies will not take passengers all the way into space, the start of which
is generally accepted by the US government to be around 80km or around 50 miles above the Earth's surface. Instead, most of these balloons will reach heights of
about 15 to 19 miles above the Earth's surface,

flying in an area known as the stratosphere. For reference, this is still nearly three times higher
than the altitude at which most commercial flights travel. We asked the companies about this detail. There are people that argued that World View's
marketing as a space experience is sort of misleading. What do you say to those those people? Well, our experience is around viewing our earth and
experiencing the darkness of space. And at 100,000ft, people are going to be able to see
the termination line where night is turning into day or day is turning into night, and see that moving
across the surface of the Earth. They're going to be able to see weather forming and moving. You know, they're going to see an organic earth,
they're going to see a living Earth. You know, and that's what's most important to us. There is no universal definition of space. We are regulated as a spaceship. We go over 98,000ft.

We are a spaceship outside the capsule. It's essentially a vacuum. We're above 99% of Earth's atmosphere, which is why the
sky is so deep black. For now, these experiences are hypothetical. All the stratospheric balloon companies we spoke to
are still developing and testing their systems. Only Zephalto has performed any crude tests so far,
though not at the company's target altitude of about 15 miles above the Earth's surface. The first flight with a, the first prototype, took
place in 2018. Now it's the fifth generation and will fly at 25km
before the summer. We have approximately ten uncrewed test flights to do
before we start flying with people. Space Perspective and World View would not give CNBC an
exact date for when they plan to begin commercial flights, but Zephalto said the company is aiming for
2025. When they do get off the ground, World View, Space 
Perspective, and Zephalto all say their experiences will

last several hours. Prices per ticket vary, ranging from $50,000 per seat
with World View to around $184,000 per seat with Zephalto. By comparison, the trips offered by Virgin Galactic
and Blue Origin are much shorter and much more expensive. Virgin Galactic, for example, sells tickets
to its 90-minute-long flight for $450,000 per seat. Spacex does offer trips that are several days long,
but getting a single seat as a tourist on the company's Crew Dragon capsule costs millions. Compared to rocket-powered space tourism, the physical
sensation that passengers will experience on a stratospheric balloon ride is much more comparable to
being on an airplane. Passengers will not experience weightlessness. This is not a thrill ride. The capsule is designed as in what we call a shirt-
sleeve environment, where you don't have to wear any specialty equipment. We don't need any physical requirements to board the
balloon.

If you can board a standard plane, you can board the balloon. For our customers, this is all about the incredible experience of seeing Earth in space, and we're able to give them that experience without the high G's that come with rocket flight, without having to do any of that training. In fact, the companies say their rides will be so gentle that customers will be able to enjoy some of the finer things in life. Zephalto says its passengers will be able to enjoy a michelin star meal in their private pod space. Perspective and World View also say their customers will be able to enjoy in-flight dining and will have access to Wi-Fi and a restroom. But of course, the biggest draw is the view. The windows are almost 360 degrees panoramic view. They're very tall, so that allows people of all shapes and sizes to be able to really have an extraordinary experience. Whether you're standing, you're sitting, you can get up and walk around.

World View plans to launch from seven locations that the company calls wonders of the world, starting with the Grand Canyon, and including the Great Wall of China and Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Space Perspective, meanwhile, will use a ship to launch and recover its balloons from the ocean, starting with missions off the coast of Florida. Zephalto plans to begin operations from a spaceport in France. The balloons that World View, Space Perspective, and Zephalto plan to use in their tourism business have been used for decades to gather scientific and weather data. Today, stratospheric balloons carrying sensors are used in a variety of industries. Worldview says remote sensing currently makes up the majority of its business. We work with NASA and NOAA, and we have commercial customers as well, oil and gas customers who are wanting to understand methane leaks in their infrastructure, or wildfire monitoring, or defense and security customers using our technology to better understand troop

movements on the ground. All the companies CNBC spoke to said they're manufacturing their own stratospheric balloons. The balloons we use are called zero pressure balloons. So that means that the atmospheric pressure on the inside of the balloon is identical to the atmospheric pressure on the outside of the balloon. If you see a helium balloon or even any kind of balloon pop, it's because the pressure on the inside is higher than the outside. So even a six-foot hole in the balloon, it would be a very, very minimal impact on the flight as a whole. Worldview has chosen to use helium as the lift gas in its balloons, while Space perspective and Zephalto are using hydrogen. Hydrogen is a combustible gas, and, you know, no matter what steps you take to try and contain hydrogen, it's still a combustible gas. Back in December 2017, a hydrogen balloon exploded into flames during a test at World View headquarters in

Arizona. In a statement, a company spokesperson told CNBC that the test was done to try to determine if hydrogen could be used as a potential lift gas, but that worldview has used helium in all prior and subsequent missions because of its non-flammable and non-explosive properties as the safest and most stable lift gas available. The company went on to say, currently, hydrogen doesn't provide enough safety assurance for us to consider it for crewed flights, but the photo and space perspective disagree, pointing to some of hydrogen's advantages over helium and saying it has a proven track record of safety. Hydrogen is cheaper and you can really get it green, whereas helium, it's a side product of petrol industry. So we have decided to use hydrogen. It is an extremely safe gas. It has actually been flown since the 1700s in balloons. Hydrogen is used in all kinds of things now, from cars to ships

to airplanes, it is a much better lift gas than
helium. It also is renewable. Unlike helium. I mean, helium is in such short supply,
that if we were to use it at scale, we would directly be competing with
hospitals because they use it in MRIs and things like that, which we just don't want
to do. We looked at the global supply of helium, and we looked
at how much helium we would be consuming. And the reality is, is we'd be consuming less than a
third of a percent of the helium supply globally. And we decided that since it's safer, it's
what makes the most sense for our solution. The helium hydrogen debate is one that's been long
discussed and started with a number of infamous airship accidents during the infancy of the technology. Perhaps the most well-known incident is that of the
Hindenburg in 1937. Experts believe a spark, likely from static electricity,
ignited the airship's hydrogen gas, which led

to a fire that destroyed it. 36 people died. Hydrogen can become flammable when it mixes with
oxygen or air, but Poynter argues airships and stratospheric balloons are not the same. In an email to CNBC, she said airships in general are
not suited for hydrogen because hydrogen can mix with entrapped air with its skin painted in
flammable material. The Hindenburg was specifically not designed for
hydrogen. It has no bearing on the overall safety of balloons. The nature of a balloon keeps air from mixing with
hydrogen, so it's very safe. In the US, commercial space tourism is not yet heavily
regulated. The FAA does currently regulate commercial human space
flight through the regulation and licensing of the launch vehicle, and that is for the
purpose of the safety of the public and property on the ground. But currently that does not cover the
individual spaceflight participant safety. The reason for this is a law passed by Congress in
2004, known as the Commercial Space Launch Amendment

Act. Congress gave authority to the FAA to regulate
commercial space launch and reentry, and spaceports, but it prohibited FAA from regulating
commercial human spaceflight. It put in this learning period, and the purpose of
that learning period was an effort to not stifle innovation, because it was a very new industry
at the time. Millegrana says that under current regulation,
commercial companies in the United States do have to abide by a few rules to get an FAA license to fly
their vehicles, which includes requirements for flight crew training and qualifications. Right now, these include showing that you have life
support. You need to show that your vehicle is going to operate
the way that you intend it to operate, and that's done through a demonstration of an
actual operational test flight. The company is required to fully inform a space flight
participant of potential risks, and that participant is required to give this
informed consent. In the absence of safety standards for commercial
spaceflight participants, the companies that CNBC spoke

to said they have put their own safety nets in place. We're not waiting for standards; we're using existing
standards, and we're looking at the design standards and the certification standards for vertical
launch and vertical recovery aircraft. So things like helicopters, you know, all of those provide the type
of standards that ensure the safety of our customers, Hartmann says. World View's capsule will also be equipped with a
redundant life support system. All three companies say their systems have emergency
parachutes that will bring the capsules to the ground. In the case of balloon failure, though, this, they
say, is an unlikely scenario. There's not a single in-flight incident in the last 20
years with these, with this particular kind of balloons technically called a zero-pressure balloon. So the technology itself is very well understood and
super safe. On the other side of the Atlantic, Zephalto says it's
developing its technology in partnership with the

French National Center for Space Studies, which has
been using stratospheric balloons for decades. Once the company passes all required tests, its system
will be certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, the same agency that certifies commercial
airliners. When you consider it compared to a rocket or a plane, a
balloon is really more simple. And that's a way also to be safer because you
have really less systems that can fail. All three companies told CNBC that they were pleased
with consumer interest. Worldview says it sold 1250 tickets so far, while
Space Perspective has sold 1800 tickets. Zephalto did not tell CNBC how many tickets
it sold, but said its initial flights were fully booked, though not ready for prime time yet. Worldview, Space Perspective, and Zephalto say they're
making progress. Our test program leverages our remote sensing business. We've done 125 flights since the start of the company,
and so every one of those is a yet

another data source for our space tourism business. In parallel, we're working on the regulatory
approvals. So even though there are not certification standards,
there are licenses to operate FAA part 450 and part 460. So we're continuing to work on that. And so all of that, coupled with the engineering that
we're doing, means that we're several years away from being able to do crewed test flights. The balloon is completely built, the capsule is now
fully built and functioning, and Marine Spaceport Voyager, which is our first ship,
is just getting completed. So we will be flying our full spacecraft in, uh, just just shortly here sometime this summer. We have already performed test flights with pilots on
board with four different prototypes, so we have already faced the different certification
for this. And now we build the new certification for the
commercial. Other companies, including Iwaya in Japan and Spain
based Halo Space, are working on similar stratospheric

tourism offerings, but Hartmann says he's not worried
about competition. All indications tell us that space tourism is here to
stay. I think that that kind of belief is inherent in all of
us, that we want to understand our earth, we want to understand the planet. And so this is one of the ways that that we as
individuals can understand our planet. You're going to have the family sitting around the
table in the evening going, you know, where are we going to go this year? What experience are we going to have as a family? You know, we've been to the Antarctic. We've gone on a safari. I know, why don't we go to space? That's that's what's coming. That's pretty much where we are, which is incredibly
exciting.

Meet The Companies Taking Tourists 100,000 Feet Above The Earth In A Balloon

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CNBC

Stratospheric Balloon Tourism: A New Frontier

- World View, based in Tucson, Arizona, is one of the startups using pressurized capsules and massive balloons to take tourists to the stratosphere, with a 600ft long balloon for their space tourism business.

- Florida Space Perspective and Zephalto are also in the stratospheric tourism race, with their own designs and significant funding.

- Unlike SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, these balloon companies won't reach space, but they offer a unique opportunity to experience the Earth from the stratosphere, appealing to a growing market for commercial space flight.

Stratospheric Balloon Flights: A Different Kind of Space Experience

Companies like World View, Space Perspective, and Zephalto are developing stratospheric balloon flights, offering a unique way to experience the edge of space.

Unlike traditional space tourism, these flights offer a longer and more affordable experience, with prices ranging from $50,000 to $184,000 per seat.

Passengers on these flights will not experience weightlessness and the physical sensation is more comparable to being on an airplane, offering a more accessible option for space enthusiasts.

Luxury Balloon Tourism: A Gentle Journey to the Edge of Space

Balloon tourism companies offer a gentle, rocket-free experience with luxurious amenities such as in-flight dining and Wi-Fi.

The balloons provide almost 360-degree panoramic views and will launch from various scenic locations across the globe.

These companies repurpose stratospheric balloons, used for scientific data collection, for their tourism business, using different gases for lift.

The Debate Over Using Hydrogen as a Lift Gas

A company spokesperson stated that they use helium for safety reasons, while proponents of hydrogen argue that it is safer, cheaper, and renewable.

The debate has historical roots in airship accidents, but supporters of hydrogen claim that it is safe for use in balloons.

The use of hydrogen in commercial space tourism is not heavily regulated in the US, as it is not currently covered by the FAA for individual participant safety.

Regulation and Safety Measures in Commercial Space Tourism

The FAA has the authority to regulate commercial space launch and reentry, as well as spaceports, but is prohibited from regulating commercial human spaceflight.

Companies in the US must abide by FAA rules to obtain a license, including demonstrating the operational capability and safety of their vehicles.

Despite the absence of specific safety standards for spaceflight participants, companies have implemented their own safety measures, such as redundant life support systems and emergency parachutes.

These companies are also making progress in development and have seen significant consumer interest in space tourism.

Several years away from crewed test flights, the company has completed the construction of the balloon and the functioning capsule.

They are also working on obtaining the necessary licenses for operation.

Despite competition from other companies, the CEO is confident in the future of space tourism, believing that it is here to stay and will become a sought-after family experience.