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Blue Origin's suborbital flights might cost $200,000 per ticket
Blue Origin still has to launch its first manned flight before it can start taking people to suborbital space. But if you're wondering how much money to save for a trip, the answer could be at least 200 grand. According to Reuters, employees "with first-hand knowledge of the pricing plan" have divulged that a seat on the company's New Shepard system will cost between $200,000 to $300,000. If true, then its pricing will be comparable to Virgin Galactic's, which had already sold trips to suborbital space for $200,000 to $250,000 per person. As for when tickets will become available for purchase, executives revealed at a conference last month that they're planning to sell seats as soon as next year.
Amateur Copenhagen Suborbitals team about to send a dummy into a space, then a man; what have you done with your life?
The non-profit, volunteer-based and sponsor-supplied Copenhagen Suborbitals are an amateur group of Danish crazies that are about to fire a crash test dummy into space. It's all part of a wild plan to send a human into space on a shoestring budget (in the thousands, not the millions), and it seems to be going pretty well so far. The launch of the "Tycho Brahe" spacecraft (pictured above), which is really as small as it looks and will be towed to sea by a submarine built by one of the team members, is slated to take place on August 30th. A manned launch is still probably a few years off, but this is the first full scale launch for the team, and obviously a huge milestone. We wish the team the best of luck, and will have a bottle of our best bubbly standing by to celebrate.
Space Adventures undercuts Virgin Galactic -- announces $100,000 space tourism flight
Space tourism is something we here at Engadget have always been pretty fond of in theory -- it is the final frontier, after all -- but the prohibitive (exorbitant, extravagant, ridiculous) $200,000 price tag on a Virgin Galactic flight pretty much ended any small hopes we ever harbored of getting on one. So, would a reduction of about 50 percent be enough to get us to sign up? That's the question that Virginia-based Space Adventures is asking. The company's just announced it's going to offer flights into suborbital space through an exclusive agreement with Armadillo Aerospace, which is currently developing the rockets for the journeys. A trip with Space Adventures is set to cost just $102,000. We still can't afford it, but we're certainly glad to see the prices fall from insane to outrageous. So, what about you? Are you in?
