space tourism ticket price

Space Tourism: How Much Does it Cost & Who's Offering It?

Last Updated: December 17, 2022

Many of us dream of going to space and over 600 people have traveled to space as astronauts in government-funded agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos. But how much does spaceflight cost in today and how is that expected to change in the coming years? 

With new advancements in spaceflight technology, the costs of space travel are decreasing, making the dream of spaceflight a little closer for us all.

Evolution of Spaceflight Costs and Technologies

During the space race, the cost of sending something into space averaged between $6,000 to over $25,000 per kg of weight not adjusted for inflation and NASA spent $28 billion to land astronauts on the moon, about $288 billion in today’s dollars.

In recent decades, it has averaged around $10,000 per kg though certain missions have been higher due to other factors including the destination, the size of the rocket, the amount of fuel needed, and the cost of fuel. 

After the retirement of the space shuttle program, NASA paid Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS at about $80 million per seat on the Soyuz rocket. NASA’s biggest and newest rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System) which is currently being utilized for the new moon missions including Artemis and Orion, currently costs about $2-4 billion per launch.

But recent years and the addition of private space companies have drastically changed the game. NASA allowed private space companies to develop equipment for missions, including a 2006 partnership with SpaceX under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to provide resupply for crew and cargo demonstration contracts to the International Space Station (ISS). 

This partnership has continued to flourish over the years with SpaceX successfully launching two NASA astronauts in May 2020 on a Crew Dragon Spacecraft, making SpaceX the first private company to send astronauts to the ISS and the first crewed orbital launch from American soil in 9 years.

With the revolutionary technology of reusable boosters from SpaceX, the cost has plummeted, achieving less than $1,600 per kg with the Falcon Heavy (still totaling more than $100 million per launch) and even a projected cost of under a thousand for their next generation model Star Ship.

 These recent innovations are even making SLS the more expensive, less efficient option if SpaceX’s projections continue to progress as expected within margins of error. We shall see how NASA plans to adapt goals in light of this.

The Falcon Heavy is a cost-effective option for launching payloads into space.

The rise of private space companies

With private space companies, the opportunity for civilians to book a trip to space similar to booking a flight came closer to reality. Dennis Tito was the first private citizen to pay for a trip to space with a trip to the ISS from April 28th to May 6th, 2001 for $20 million dollars. Tito purchased his experience through Space Adventures Inc. which was founded in 1998 and offers a variety of different space experiences. They even acquired Zero Gravity Corporation, NASA’s provider of Reduced Gravity Training (not in space) for its astronauts, in 2008. They offer similar experiences for private individuals starting at about $8,200 as of this publishing (December 2022).

Space Adventures sent seven other space tourists to the ISS through 2009, but due to a number of factors, Space Adventures had to put their ISS offerings on hold until 2021 when they were able to purchase two Soyuz seats due to NASA moving their contract to SpaceX. Space Adventures sent two people to the ISS via the Roscosmos Soyuz rocket in December 2021 and is working on expanding its offerings.

In addition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, there are a number of other private space companies getting into the commercial spaceflight/ space tourism market, most notably Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins.

Flight Providers & Rates

What are the current rates for commercial spaceflight tickets? What commercial spaceflight trips have already happened? All prices are per person/ per seat.

SpaceX has had the most experience in sending humans to space thanks to its partnership with NASA and Musk has made it clear that he wants to make space travel an option for the public. To date, SpaceX has offered two commercial spaceflight options and has one big one planned for the future:

• SpaceX completed a Multi-Day Orbital Voyage, the first of their new plan to offer private astronaut experiences through their NASA partnership.  
• Estimated $55 million for a 3-day stay inside a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule orbiting the Earth at 357 miles (574 km) with three crewmates, sponsored by billionaire Jared Isaacman to raise money for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital
• Partnership between SpaceX and Houston-based Axiom Space Inc.
• $55 million for a 10-day trip to ISS at 408 km with a weeklong (8-day) stay in the orbital lab. 
• Expected to continue in 2023
• Axiom plans to build a stand-alone space station to replace the ISS with the first module expected to launch in 2024.
• Steve Aoki: American DJ and record producer
• Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd: American science communicator, content creator, photographer, and musician
• Yemi A.D.: Czech choreographer, art director and performer
• Rhiannon Adam: Irish photographer
• Karim Iliya: British photographer and filmmaker
• Brendan Hall: American filmmaker and photographer
• Dev Joshi: Indian television actor
• Choi Seung-hyun (stage name: T.O.P.): South Korean rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor
• Cost is unknown, likely a minimum of $500 million

2. Blue Origin

Blue Origin: currently offers a 100km 12-minute ride to the Karman Line, the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space; pricing is still unclear and dependent on a variety of factors 

• On July 2021, Jeff and Mark Bezos went into space on the New Shepard rocket with Oliver Daemen (who won the trip through an auction bid of around 28 million) and honored guest Wally Funk (a member of Mercury 13, the private program in which women trained to be astronauts but ultimately never went to space)
• Blue Origin has completed 6 commercial space flights as of this publishing. Some “honorable guests” have been invited free of charge, such as Funk and actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek). Some have been sponsored or have received special deals due to their nonprofit status.
• $28 million winning auction bid for the first flight ( $19 million was donated)
• $1 million for a board member of a nonprofit
• About $1.25 for a Dude Perfect comedy group crew member, hosted by MoonDAO in August 2022

3. Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride

Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride: $450,000 for a 90-minute ride to suborbital space 50km above sea level 

• In July 2021, founder Richard Branson flew to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere with two pilots and three other Virgin Galactic employees as the first test of commercial spaceflight for the company
• Each VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo carries up to four passengers
• Expected flights are currently anticipated to begin in 2023 
• Includes training accommodations and amenities; launches from New Mexico

4. Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip

Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip: $50-60million for a 12-day trip to the ISS at 408 km

• In October 2021 an actress and director shot scenes for the first movie filmed in space
• December 2021 Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano for two days (same billionaire planning to go to the moon with SpaceX)
• With the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, this option is effectively nonexistent currently

5. Space Perspective

Space Perspective: a six-hour balloon ride to space/ the stratosphere on their “Spaceship Neptune” at $125,000

• Rides are currently scheduled to begin by the end of 2024. 
• A pressurized capsule will be slowly lifted by a football-field-sized hydrogen-filled balloon 19 miles (30 km) into the stratosphere, about 3 times the altitude of commercial planes. 
• The passenger cabin features a bar, bathroom, and windows for sightseeing and is expected to carry 8 passengers and 1 pilot per trip.

6. Aurora Space Station (no longer in development)

Aurora Space Station was supposed to be the world’s first luxury space hotel, offering a 12-day stay for $9.5 million allowing them to free float, observe space and earth, practice hydroponics and play in a hologram deck, but they shut down operations and refunded all deposits in March 2021. They received a lot of media attention and therefore are noted here due to that notoriety.

Conclusion: the current cost of flying to space

Currently, it is only available to those who can spend an average of $250,000 to $500,000 for suborbital trips (about a fifteen-minute ride to the edge of space and back) or flights to actual orbit at more than $50 million per seat (though typically a longer trip than 15 minutes).

It could be free/ discounted if you can find a sponsor, often for nonprofit/ charity purposes, or if you are someone of notoriety that can help spread the company’s mission. 

Waitlists are available for most offerings, with a deposit, with many stretching years into the future, which might end up helping you have a spot at a more reasonable price in the future if you can save up.

Many companies are looking to provide extended stay options on private space stations in the future, similar to how you might book a flight somewhere and stay in a hotel for a few days. Again, for the immediate future, this is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. The biggest portion of the cost would be launching them, though it is still estimated that a couple million dollars will be needed to cover the expenses of your stay while you are on the space station, whether that is included in the ticket price or added on top of that.

Many companies are hopeful they can eventually price a trip to space down to $100,000 but that will likely take some time, even with the cost-saving measures of reusable boosters. Many forms of recent technology have evolved exponentially in recent years and with dropping price rates as well. Just as plane travel was originally prohibitively expensive, but has now become fairly reasonable for the average consumer, the hope is that the same will eventually happen with space tourism, but we will have to see how long that takes. 

While the possibility of going to space is still out of reach for many of us, hopefully, the advancements in recent years and those yet to come will help to continually lower the costs of going to space, just as has occurred in many other fields. This author, for one, truly hopes that the interest of the elite who are currently able to participate in these offerings will spur research and development, not just of space tourism but space exploration in general, to help fuel a quicker journey to space access for all

Written by Sarah Hoffschwelle

Sarah Hoffschwelle is a freelance writer who covers a combination of topics including astronomy, general science and STEM, self-development, art, and societal commentary. In the past, Sarah worked in educational nonprofits providing free-choice learning experiences for audiences ages 2-99. As a lifelong space nerd, she loves sharing the universe with others through her words. She currently writes on Medium at  https://medium.com/@sarah-marie  and authors self-help and children’s books.

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William Shatner was beamed up into space on Wednesday morning, along with three other passengers, as part of Blue Origin’s second launch into space with tourists. 

Shatner, who returned with the crew after an 11-minute flight on the New Shepard, became the oldest person to go into space at age 90. 

The highly publicized event marks an aggressive push from some companies to enter the realm of commercial space travel. Blue Origin auctioned off a seat on its first spaceflight, which took place back in July and included billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, for $28 million . 

Bezos said that the company has sold $100 million in tickets for future flights. Back in 2018, Reuters said that Bezos had planned to charge between $200,000 to $300,000 per ticket for a spaceflight. 

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic said it’s reopened ticket sales for flights a t $450,000 a pop. The spaceflight company, whose billionaire founder Richard Branson also ventured into space in July, has ambitions to open commercial flights next year. 

“As we endeavour to bring the wonder of space to a broad global population, we are delighted to open the door to an entirely new industry and consumer experience,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement. 

The company previously sold tickets for $250,000 each in anticipation for future flights, but suspended sales in 2014 after a test flight crash.

Axiom Space, a private aerospace company that wants to build the first commercial space station, is planning to send private citizens to the International Space Station in 2022 aboard the Crew Dragon from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Tickets sold for a whopping $55 million each. Back in 2019, NASA opened up the ISS to private flights. 

The market for space tourism 

The focus on space flight reflects a broader shift in who the tourism market now caters to. 

As the ranks of very wealthy individuals have grown, the middle-class has been priced out of the market, which now focuses more on “exotic luxury,” said Howard McCurdy, a professor of public affairs at American University.

He said, for example, experiences might now consist of taking a trip through the Drake Passage to Antarctica, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

“That’s pretty expensive,” McCurdy said. “ It’s not there for everybody, but it is there for a substantial number of people who didn’t exist 40 to 50 years ago in that income category.” 

Mark Sundahl, a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law with expertise in space law, said he sees space tourism as a viable industry.  

“There’s been a lot of interest and a large number of deposits made by prospective spaceflight participants, as they’re known in the industry, and it’s going to be very popular,” Sundahl said. 

But while the rich will be able to afford these tickets, some don’t think space tourism will ever become a mass market opportunity. 

“Projections of price and access to space going way back have always been very optimistic. And it’s still very expensive,” said Henry R. Hertzfeld, a professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University. “Space is risky — it’s not as easy as it looks when everything goes right.” 

The economics of private space companies

McCurdy said he does not think companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic can make money solely flying passengers. To succeed, they’ll have to find other revenue streams. 

He pointed to the Air Mail Act of 1925, or the Kelly Act, which allowed private companies to bid for contracts to deliver the mail , which helped financially sustain their operations. 

To finance his Blue Origin operation, Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year. The company has also partnered with NASA to carry research and technology payloads into space.  

In 2020, NASA bega accepting proposals from scientists who wanted to fly with their experiments to space on commercial rockets from companies such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. It offered between $450,00 to $650,000 for their proposals, reported The Verge.  

And just last month, NASA awarded $146 million in contracts to five companies, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, to create lander design concepts for its Artemis program (which aims to return astronauts to the moon) and conduct component tests. 

“You get the mail, you get some packages, you get some people, and all of a sudden, it starts to make economic sense,” McCurdy said. “And then of course, you charge the people wildly different rates. To be first, to be with Shatner.” 

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Virgin Galactic is reopening space tourist ticket sales for a limited time

A seat will set you back $450,000.

Starting Wednesday (Feb. 16), aspiring space tourists can once again book a trip to the final frontier with Virgin Galactic .

The company announced Tuesday (Feb. 15) that it will temporarily reopen its waiting list for customers ahead of providing commercial service. The seat deposit is $150,000, and the total ticket price is $450,000.

As of November 2021, Virgin Galactic had a reported 700 or so customers in its pool, with the plan to start flying them on commercial flights in late 2022 . At the time, Virgin Galactic said it planned to have 1,000 people ready for flights by then, and the company appears to be sticking to that timeline.

"At Virgin Galactic, we believe that space is transformational," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a company statement on Tuesday. "We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start of commercial service later this year, providing an incredibly strong foundation as we begin regular operations and scale our fleet."

In photos: Virgin Galactic's 1st fully crewed spaceflight with Richard Branson

— SpaceShipTwo: A flight path to space tourism — Richard Branson: Music mogul & space tourism entrepreneur — In photos: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Unity reaches space for the first time

Ticket sales open to the general public on Wednesday (Feb. 16). It's unclear how long the buying window will stay open; Virgin Galactic has not yet disclosed an end date. 

This isn't the first opportunity to buy seats with Virgin Galactic, as the existing customer pool shows. For example, the company temporarily reopened ticket sales in August 2021, a month after Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed spaceflight with founder Richard Branson on board. That window was the first to feature the $450,000 price; previously, you could've bought a seat for $250,000. 

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Virgin Galactic operates a space plane called VSS Unity, which takes off under the wings of a carrier aircraft called VMS Eve. Once the duo gets to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), the space plane drops free and flies to suborbital space under its own rocket motor power.

VSS Unity can hold up to six passengers and two pilots at one time. These people experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth from suborbital space.

VSS Unity has flown to suborbital space four times so far, but it is currently sidelined due to maintenance and enhancement work on VMS Eve, which is expected to continue until mid-2022.

Virgin Galactic is working on two other space planes to expand operations, amid competition from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin , which has three crewed suborbital spaceflights under its belt. Virgin Galactic's VSS Imagine is expected to begin unpowered "glide flight" testing this year, while VSS Inspire is under construction.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter  @howellspace . Follow us on Twitter  @Spacedotcom  or Facebook.

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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Virgin Galactic’s space tourism ticket price rockets skyward

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane isn’t the only thing that rockets skyward as part of the company’s space tourism experience. The cost of a seat on the aircraft has gone the same way, too.

During its latest quarterly financial report announced on Thursday, August 5, the company said the cost of a seat on its spaceplane will now cost $450,000, a big increase on the $250,000 some 600 people paid during the first phase of ticket sales that ran until 2014.

Last month Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson demonstrated what its high-paying passengers will get for their money when he took the company’s first fully crewed ride to close to the Kármán line, the boundary 62 miles above Earth that’s generally accepted as marking the edge of space. The trip includes being released from a carrier plane at 50,000 feet, a brief rocket ride, incredible views of Earth, a few minutes of weightlessness, and a gentle glide home.

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Virgin Galactic said three types of ticketing are available: A single seat for $450,000; a multi-seat couples/friends/family package; and a full-flight buy-out that takes all six seats. Prices for the last two options are yet to be revealed.

Moneyed folks who drop big bucks on a seat now, though, will have a long wait before they can climb aboard VSS Unity. That’s because Virgin Galactic first has to serve not only the 600 people already waiting in line but also another 1,000 customers who recently paid a $1,000 deposit for the space tourism experience. On top of that, the company’s commercial space tourism experience isn’t likely to get underway until the second of 2022 at the earliest.

The company also revealed that its next rocket-powered spaceflight, Unity 23, is scheduled for late September from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the same location where Branson’s recent flight started and finished. The flight is will carry members of the Italian Air Force as well as several research payloads.

If you’re up for a trip to the edge of space but the asking price is somewhat out of range, then you could put your name in the hat for a raffle offering two free seats aboard Unity as the top prize. All you have to do is make a charitable donation and you’ll be in with a chance.

Virgin Galactic announced a net loss of $94 million for its most recent quarter, compared to a $72 million loss for the same period a year earlier. Robust ticket sales will be vital in the coming years to ensure the viability of its space tourism business.

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Virgin Galactic will embark on its first-ever commercial spaceflight in less than two weeks’ time, the company has announced.

The rocket-powered flight will mark the start of a new phase for Virgin Galactic following years of testing that saw numerous delays and also a crash that killed a pilot.

Virgin Galactic has successfully completed what should be its final test flight before launching commercial services for its sub-orbital rocket flights next month.

Thursday's mission was the second fully crewed test flight following the first one in 2021 when Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson flew with five others to the edge of space in the rocket-powered VSS Unity aircraft.

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic is just days away from what should be its final fully crewed test flight before a commercial launch this summer.

The team has announced that it’s currently targeting Thursday, May 25, for a mission that will see four crewmembers blasted to the edge of space aboard the rocket-powered VSS Unity plane.

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How much does a ticket to space on New Shepard cost? Blue Origin isn’t saying.

By Joey Roulette

• Oct. 13, 2021

Blue Origin has declined to publicly state a price for a ticket to fly on New Shepard. The company is nearing $100 million in sales so far, Mr. Bezos has said. But it’s unclear how many ticket holders that includes.

“We don’t know quite yet” when Blue Origin will publicly announce a price, Mr. Bezos told reporters in July after his flight to space. “Right now we’re doing really well with private sales.”

Oliver Daemen, the Dutch teenager aboard Blue Origin’s first crewed flight in July, was occupying a seat that the company auctioned off for $28 million, a steep number that even shocked some company executives. Of that total, $19 million was donated equally to 19 space organizations.

Mr. Daemen, 18, wasn’t the winning bidder. His father, a private equity executive, was the runner-up in the auction and was next in line after the actual winner. That individual, who has not been named, plunked down $28 million before postponing their trip over a scheduling conflict, Blue Origin said at the time.

Tickets to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo were hiked to $450,000 in August, from $250,000, when the company reopened ticket sales after a yearslong hiatus.

Flights to orbit — a much higher altitude than Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic’s trips go — are far more expensive. Three passengers to the International Space Station next year are paying $55 million each for their seats on a SpaceX rocket, bought through the company Axiom Space.

Many wealthy customers and space company executives see the steep ticket prices as early investments into the nascent space tourism industry, hoping the money they put down can help lower the cost of launching rockets.

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Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight took off this week. Here are the players taking civilians to space.

• Virgin Galactic launched its first space tourism flight for paying customers on August 10.
• It marks a new era in space tourism for the company, with monthly flights expected to follow. 
• Space tourism is a growing industry for the rich. Seats on a Virgin Galactic flight cost $450,000 each.

This week, Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight successfully launched from New Mexico, taking three passengers who weren't traditional astronauts, to the edge of space and back .

Blasting off to the edge of space has become a more popular — though hardly mainstream — tourism experience. The company intends on operating commercial flights every month, ushering in a new era for space travel. 

Galactic 02's passengers included Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, a mother and daughter from the Caribbean who won their seats in a ticket raffle, as well as Jon Goodwin, an 80-year-old former Olympian . 

Virgin Galactic , Richard Branson's commercial space venture, was established in 2004 and completed its first commercial spaceflight in June. On the flight were three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council. 

Space tourism translates to big business for the company: In its second quarter earnings report, Virgin Galactic attributed an increase in quarterly revenue from $0.4 in 2022 to $2 million this year to "commercial spaceflight and membership fees related to future astronauts." 

Tickets for a seat on a Virgin Galactic rocket can cost $450,000, though some, like Goodwin, bought their tickets over a decade ago for $250,000.

The steep price doesn't seem to be keeping people away. As of the end of last year, about 800 tickets for commercial spaceflights had been reserved, the company said in its 2022 annual report . These tickets will translate to about $207 million in future revenue, per the report.

Virgin Galactic is not the only company in the game. In July 2021, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sent four people, including Bezos, 62 miles above Earth, marking the first passenger spaceflight completed by the Amazon chairman's company, which was founded in 2000. 

Using a rocket called New Shepard , Blue Origin has completed six human spaceflights since.

There's also SpaceX, Elon Musk 's rocket company, which was founded in 2002 and is making concerted efforts in the commercial spaceflight industry.

In September 2021, SpaceX's Falcon 9  rocket took four civilians close to orbit without any professional astronauts on board. It was the first all-civilian crew to successfully complete a mission and was funded entirely by billionaire Jared Issacman. 

The following year, SpaceX , in conjunction with Axiom Space, launched the first all-private crew to the International Space Station, where they spent more than a week. The four attendees spent $55 million each for the trip.

Of course, most of us mere mortals aren't able to afford the price of entry into outer space. So until it becomes more affordable, here's a look at the options available to space tourists:

Virgin Galactic completed its first space tourism flight, dubbed Galactic 02, with paying customers on August 10. With monthly flights expected to take place moving forward, the company has asserted itself as a major player in the spaceflight industry.

Source: Virgin Galactic

The flight took off at 10:30 a.m. EST and landed at hour later, reaching a an apex point of 55 miles above the Earth. Virgin Galactic's next private spaceflight, Galactic 03, is planned for September.

The flight marked the first mother-daughter duo, Olympian, and majority female crew to go to space. Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers also become the first Caribbean astronauts.

Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial space flight, Galactic 01, at the end of June. The mission was for research, not tourism, and included three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council.

Source: Insider

The flight lasted 72 minutes from take off to landing.

Galactic 01's objectives were to measure hypergravity and microgravity effects on the human body.

Walter Villadei, a colonel in the Italian Air Force, was on the flight.

As of now, tickets are going for $450,000 a pop. While cabins can fit four people, Virgin Galactic intends on flying out only three passengers, reserving the final seat for an astronaut trainer.

Sources: Insider , Spacenews

Blue Origin's New Shepard made its ascent towards the edge of space and subsequent return back in August 2022. NS-22 was the company's most recent successful mission, and marked the rocket's 22nd mission to space and sixth human flight.

Source: Blue Origin

The calm before the storm: New Shepard at its launch pad ahead of NS-22 last year. Six crew members were part of the flight and getting ready inside the craft.

During the course of Blue Origin's 11-minute trips, tourists experience zero gravity, which offers a sense of weightlessness. The company requires passengers to take a course in order to prepare.

Mario Ferreira, a businessman and entrepreneur, became the first person from Portugal to travel to space after successfully completing NS-22. Sara Sabry, an engineer and CEO of the nonprofit Deep Space Initiative, pictured on the right, was the first person from Egypt to go to space.

Past Blue Origin passengers include "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, healthcare entrepreneur Glen de Vries, and Bezos' brother Mark.

Blue Origin is notoriously tight-lipped about its ticket pricing, but prior to its first commercial flight in July 2021, a passenger who later had to skip the flight due to "a scheduling conflict" said he'd paid $28 million to secure a seat.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is the only vessel that has sent private civilians to the International Space Station.

SpaceX's commercial space flight is the only one to actually send tourists into orbit, or 363 miles above Earth. In September 2021, a Falcon 9 rocket took four civilians into space for a total cost of around $220 million, paid for in full by billionaire Jared Isaacman.

Source: ABC

Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

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How much is a ticket to space $100,000 if you can wait a decade—but here’s how to pay nothing.

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The interior of the Blue Origin capsule, which can hold six people.

How much does a ticket to space cost? That depends on who you book with, how you want to get there and whether you get lucky or not.

On the day that billionaire Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos goes to space it’s worth knowing that a ticket to reach space can cost as much as $55 million for a “proper” orbital flight and a visit to the International Space Station (ISS)—and as little as nothing at all. 

Can you really get to space for free? Sure you can, by entering a competition to win Virgin Galactic tickets via Omaze.com . As space tourism flights on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic get scheduled, likely in 2022, look out for more competitions. 

In an article on the MoneyTransfers.com website an expert predicts that sub-orbital space travel—like that of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic—could cost around $100,000 within a decade.

Space tourism is an industry previously predicted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch as one that could grow to $2.7 trillion in 30 years.

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The distinction between sub-orbital and orbital space tourism is key. While sub-orbital “up and down” missions in supersonic planes and rockets—such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin—orbital missions are much longer and much pricer. 

The private 10-day Axiom Mission 1 including an 8-day stay at the ISS, planned for January 2022, is costing each of the four private astronauts a whopping $55 million for a seat in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

That makes the $28 million paid to Blue Origin during an auction for a seat on the first 11-minute sub-orbital flight—a seat that will now be used by an 18-year old from The Netherlands —appear vastly over the odds. 

Although “space for all” is a phrase often heard from space tourism industry, demand for the first batch of flights is likely to be huge, leading to big asking prices. It’s rumoured that Blue Origin could ask $500,000 , though prices aren’t yet known.

The same goes for Virgin Galactic, which plans to begin private flights to space during 2022. It charged $250,000 for tickets until it paused ticket sales a few years ago. While it has said it wants to charge $40,000, that’s in the long term. 

The most affordable way to pay to get to space would be appear to be via a company called Space Perspective, which plans to launch a pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance space balloon.

In a six-hour flight costing $125,000 per person, passengers in Spaceship Neptune and Neptune One will lift-off from Space Coast Spaceport in Florida, though not until 2024. 

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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• Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic plans to open ticket sales to the public for flights to edge of space

Though customers may be waiting a minute.

By Loren Grush

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Space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced its plans to open up ticket sales to the general public on Wednesday, February 16th, giving people an opportunity to buy a ride on the venture’s spaceplane that takes customers to the edge of space and back.

Tickets will run interested customers a cool $450,000. In order to secure their seat, people must pay a $150,000 deposit and then pay the remaining $300,000 before flight. Virgin Galactic has an application that individuals can fill out on the company’s website .

Tickets will run interested customers a cool $450,000

Ticket sales may be opening soon, but it could be a while before customers get the chance to fly. Virgin Galactic successfully flew its founder , billionaire Richard Branson, to space in July of last year, a major milestone that the company had always planned to jumpstart its commercial operations. The company then planned to fly a follow-up flight called Unity 23, which would carry three members of the Italian Air Force, becoming the first revenue-generating flight. But in September, Virgin Galactic put the flight on pause after finding a manufacturing defect in a company vehicle. The next month, the company gave an update saying that it would not resume commercial flights until the end of 2022 in order to conduct a full “enhancement program” of its vehicles.

On top of that, Virgin Galactic also has a bit of a backlog of customers who have already put down reservations for trips to space. For years, the company has had roughly 600 customers who made reservations for $250,000 during the initial ticketing round, which began roughly a decade ago . Virgin Galactic then opened ticket sales again last August, allowing people who had expressed interest in purchasing a ticket to the company to actually buy a seat. Those tickets also ran $450,000, secured with a $150,000 deposit. Virgin Galactic said it sold 100 of those .

The company has set an internal goal of reaching 1,000 ticket sales ahead of the first commercial flights this year. There’s still plenty of time left in 2022 for Virgin Galactic to sell 300 more tickets.

To get to space, customers will fly in one of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplanes, which take off from the air. These vehicles are carried to an altitude of roughly 49,000 feet underneath the wing of a massive carrier aircraft called White Knight Two. Once at the right height, White Knight Two releases a plane, which then ignites its onboard rocket engine, initiating the climb to space. As the plane ascends to more than 50 miles above the Earth, passengers on board can unbuckle their seatbelts and float about the cabin for a few minutes. Then to get back down to Earth, the pilots shift the spaceplane’s wings and glide down to a runway, a bit like a regular plane.

The company has set an internal goal of reaching 1,000 ticket sales

Virgin Galactic’s primary spaceplane vehicle is VSS Unity , which the company unveiled in 2016 and used to take Branson to space. A newly complete plane, VSS Imagine , was unveiled in March of 2021. The company is currently working on a third vehicle, VSS Inspire .

Today’s news comes a week ahead of Virgin Galactic’s next quarterly earnings meaning, scheduled for February 22nd, when the company will discuss its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2022. The update also coincides with a rebrand for Virgin Galactic. The company’s original logo, a close-up image of Stephen Hawking’s eye, has now been replaced with a purple icon of the company’s spaceship and the company’s name.

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Space Tourism: All You Need to Know About Booking a Galactic Getaway

Your adventure to space awaits..

Sometimes you need to take a break and escape everyday life, and there's no better escape than placing a pin in the infinite interstellar map and taking a trip to outer space.

Space tourism has finally become a reality and although the ticket to ride is still at a premium for most, the cost of booking a galactic getaway is gradually falling as companies find new and innovative ways to make space travelling technology more efficient to reduce the prices for inquisitive citizen explorers.

So, whether it's something you could consider now or perhaps way off into the future, we have a rundown of everything you need to know before journeying beyond our planet. Click through our slideshow or scroll through the celestial catalogue below for all of the information you need about the services and packages currently on offer.

Space Tourism Guide: All You Need to Know About Booking a Galactic Getaway

Modes of Transport

Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX are three companies that have been at the forefront of the race to space, having already made headlines for their various crewed spaceflights. However, more and more companies are now gearing up to offer suborbital jaunts to space… or at least to the very edge of it.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin shared news of its fourth successful space tourism mission in March 2022. That trip saw five paying customers board the company's New Shepard capsule to travel past the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – before floating weightlessly for several minutes to take in the surrounding sights.

According to the Blue Origin website , there are reclining seats in the pressurized crew capsule, with room to take up to six people on a suborbital spaceflight. Each passenger gets their own window seat, and those windows take up over one-third of the capsule's surface area, giving every occupant a spectacular view of the Earth as they depart it.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson achieved his dream and reached the edge of space aboard the SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane in July 2021. Following the success of that mission, the company reopened ticket sales to the general public for its commercial spaceflights. Those flights are due to start departing sometime in 2023, per SpaceNews .

Branson's company promises a "first-of-its-kind flight" that begins with a smooth runaway take-off, much like a regular plane lifting off from one destination to travel to another. The Virgin Galactic spaceship, however, is attached to a mothership and will climb to approximately 50,000 ft before being released and propelled towards the stars.

SpaceX launched its first commercial orbital crew spaceflight in May 2020, successfully transporting NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. More than a year later, it was reported that Elon Musk had sent four private passengers into orbit for a three-day flight, marking the company's first mission to space with an all-civilian crew.

NASA is using the Boeing Starliner spacecraft and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for its tourism missions . The Dragon spacecraft can carry up to 7 passengers to Earth orbit and beyond. The official site for Elon Musk's SpaceX shows the practicality of the capsule, with a row of seats, control displays, and storage space filling the quarters.

Two alternative options come by way of World View and Space Perspective. Both companies have designed space tourism solutions that will allow curious travellers to explore new perspectives from the "edge of space," with their Balloon capsules reaching a peak altitude of 100,000 feet (almost 20 miles), above 99% of Earth's atmosphere.

World View's Explorer capsule is equipped with eight reclining seats , personal monitors, and large viewing ports for passengers to gaze upon the curvature of Earth and the darkness of space, while Space Perspective operates a state-of-the-art, customizable Space Lounge with chairs, tables, couches, and even a bathroom that has a skylight.

Experiences

Companies such as World View and Space Perspective might not be able to thrust their passengers into the far reaches of space like Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX, but they are offering a luxury experience to make their trips beyond the blue marble as memorable as possible for the passengers aboard their space balloons.

The seats in World View's hexagon-shaped pods are comparable to the level of luxury that a passenger would experience in business class on a standard commercial flight. According to Dezeen , each seat is accompanied by "a cocktail table, a screen providing educational materials and activities, a central console, personal storage and a beverage holder."

There's also a concierge service on board to ensure that all guests are catered to during their six-hour trip at altitude. Flyers will be offered "a gourmet meal as well as drinks" as part of their fare and will be able to "stream and use their mobile phones from the capsule," though the capsule's two-metre-high elliptical windows might make for better viewing.

Space Perspective's virtual tour of Spaceship Neptune reveals the luxury interior of its Space Lounge, complete with comfortable lounge chairs, mood lighting, and even plants and herbs that can be used in food and drink prep. The vessel also has its very own cocktail menu because, after all, it's five o'clock somewhere down on the Earth below.

The experience aboard Spaceship Neptune is fully customizable for those explorers looking to book a full capsule. "From the menu and cocktails onboard, to the soundtrack and lighting, your individual preferences can be incorporated into your journey to create your definitive ultimate adventure," the company's official website notes.

While space travel has opened up to the public, it's only possible for those who can afford it and prices vary from company to company. For example, a suborbital trip with Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic will typically cost between $250,000 to $500,000 while SpaceX is considerably more – a reported $55 million each for those that travelled to the Space Station .

Companies offering balloon rides over rocket launches can offer space tourism experiences at lower prices. A voyage with World View will cost $50,000 a ticket and they have "flexible financing" options available for curious space explorers. Meanwhile, Space Perspective is asking $125,000 per ticket with a $1,000 refundable deposit to reserve a seat.

Launch Dates

Booking a galactic getaway is just a few clicks away and most of the companies mentioned in this article are already up and running with their space tourism ventures. Reuters reports that Blue Origin completed its fifth crewed flight in June and the company currently remains open to bookings for flights in 2022 right the way through to 2025 and beyond.

Virgin Galactic opened its ticket sales back up in February and is still taking spaceflight reservations now. The company aims to have about three launches per month when operations start in 2023, according to SpaceNews. Likewise, SpaceX welcomes people to start planning their journeys now, though it's unclear when those flights will actually launch.

World View is taking bookings and deposits for its commercial spaceflights, which are scheduled to begin from the Grand Canyon and Great Barrier Reef in 2024, with more locations opening up in the future. And Space Perspective's first flights have sold out for 2024 but the company is still accepting reservations for its spaceflight experiences.

Gorgeous Photos of Earth from Space

Before you start exploring space for yourself, you might want to learn a little more about it. After all, there are over 5,000 planets outside our solar system and there are a lot of weird and wonderful ones . There are also heaps of noteworthy stars to write home about, including one named after a Tolkien character and another that is the farthest star ever detected .

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman.

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What You Pay For Blue Origin’s Spaceflight Depends On Who You Are

Jeff bezos's space tourism company blue origin has a unique pricing strategy, where celebrity and novelty can mean big discounts..

Jeff Bezos ’s rocket company Blue Origin appears to be leading the space tourism race . While it’s still all talk and no action at rival Virgin Galactic, which has yet to launch paying passengers into space, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is five missions into commercial launch and has sent 25 civilians to the lower edge of space (100 kilometers in the sky). But what these passengers paid for their tickets on New Shepard is a mystery.

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Blue Origin doesn’t advertise price information on its flight reservation page. Passengers say they have paid from zero to nearly $30 million. Industry insiders say Blue Origin’s ticket price is tailored to individual passengers based on a variety of factors.

“It’s not about money; it’s about who you are, your social capital, whether you align with their launch purposes. It’s kind of a package deal,” said Roman Chiporukha, cofounder of SpaceVIP, a platform that helps the wealthy book space trips, including Blue Origin’s. Blue Origin declined to discuss its pricing strategy.

Most of Blue Origin’s competitors follow a simpler approach. Virgin Galactic sells a 90-minute ride to suborbital space for $450,000 per seat. Space Perspective charges $125,000 per person on a six-hour journey to the stratosphere in a balloon-borne pressurized capsule. Even the most out-of-reach space experience has a price tag: Axiom Space, a Texas startup, is marketing a 10-day trip to the International Space for $55 million.

Blue Origin ticket ranges from zero to $28 million

In June 2021, Blue Origin auctioned off a seat on its maiden flight for $28 million—more than 100 times what Virgin Galactic charges for a similar experience. After the winner said he couldn’t make the trip due to a schedule conflict, the seat was sold to the second highest bidder, who reportedly paid nearly as much . But a passenger who is scheduled to fly this December paid only $1 million for his seat, according to Tim Chrisman, a former CIA officer and the cofounder of the Foundation for the Future, a nonprofit advocating for infrastructure development in space. The passenger is a board member of the nonprofit, Chrisman said.

Several passengers paid nothing , flying as Blue Origin’s “honorable guests.” That included aviation pioneer Wally Funk, Star Trek a ctor William Shatner, former football star Michael Strahan, and Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard (after whom Blue Origin named its rocket).

Some didn’t pay Blue Origin directly but had sponsors cover the cost. Katya Echazarreta, a 26-year-old electrical engineer who hosts a science show on YouTube, flew on a June 4 flight paid for by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit founded by Dylan Taylor, an investor who flew on a New Shepard mission in December 2021.

Space for Humanity declined to disclose how much Echazarreta’s ticket cost, but said it paid with the support of former New Shepard passengers. In June 2021, Blue Origin’s nonprofit branch, Club for the Future, donated $1 million to Space for Humanity with money from the auction proceeds from Blue Origin’s maiden flight.

“It sounds as though they don’t want to say what their price is so that they can tailor it to how much you are worth, and you still feel like you get a good deal because you are paying less than the person who bought the first seat through the auction,” said Chrisman of the Foundation for the Future.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the commercial human spaceflight, doesn’t have any rules around how much a company can charge its passengers or whether they can customize pricing.

In the U.S., price discrimination is legal as long as it’s not based on a prohibitive basis, such as race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. The practice is commonplace in luxury goods and services where demand exceeds supply, said Nick Davis, founder of Instajet, a private jet charter service. “In a very basic sense, something is worth what someone will pay for it.”

In space tourism, Davis added, customers tend to be willing to pay a significant premium in exchange for a coveted experience. “It’s not only the amount of money available. There is an element of kudos in being part of what may be a very exclusive and small group of participants.”

Blue Origin gives away free rides to certain passengers

With few exceptions, people who flew for free or through sponsors were often featured as the milestone passenger of their mission and became part of what some might call a gimmicky marketing campaign.

Funk and Shatner, 82 and 90, respectively, at the time of their flights, were the oldest persons to go to space. Strahan, who stands at six feet and five inches, was the tallest person in space, and Echazarreta, who was born in Mexico, was hailed as the first ever Mexican woman in space.

“There’s always this aim to narrowly define things that you can say you are the first. It’s a little goofy, but it’s a big piece of the space culture,” said Chrisman.

But the reverse isn’t true. Oliver Daemen, the winner of Blue Origin’s maiden flight auction, happened to be the youngest person to travel to space and was heavily featured in Blue Origin’s press material at the time. But the company didn’t give him any discount or refund in exchange for his brand ambassadorship.

“If you fit with their launch purpose, they will engage you. It’s a matter of what you can offer them, not the other way around,” said SpaceVIP’s Chiporukha.

Many of Blue Origin’s special guests are celebrities, but celebrity alone won’t produce a discount.  In November 2021, actor Tom Hanks revealed during an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that Blue Origin had approached to him before inviting William Shatner to fly on the October 2021 mission, but he turned it down because the ticket was too expensive.

“It costs like $28 million or something like that…I’m doing good, but I ain’t paying $28 [million] bucks,” Hanks told Kimmel.

Sara Blask, a spokesperson for Blue Origin, said the company “will continue to look for noteworthy people to fly on our flights and continue to open up access to space.”

The spokesperson said Blue Origin has generated more than $100 million from the New Shepard space tourism program and the company aims to double the number of passengers this year from last.

As its commercial business grows, Blue Origin may eventually need to be more transparent about its pricing like other space tourism companies. Bezos has said New Shepard flights will be priced similarly to its competitors. In 2018, two company insiders leaked that commercial flights would be priced at between $200,000 and $300,000, which was in line with what Virgin Galactic charged at the time. (Virgin Galactic has raised its rate to $450,000 per seat.)

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated Blue Origin’s nonprofit branch might have paid for Katya Echazarreta’s flight. 

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How much does space travel cost?

Spaceflight has traditionally been a government-led activity — and it's never been cheap. But the stratospheric cost of putting people and payloads into space is finally starting to fall, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX and other private spaceflight companies.

Here’s a look at what it costs to go to space, whether it’s another satellite that needs to be placed in orbit or an adventurous billionaire looking for a joyride around the moon .

Sending up a satellite

Using its 230-foot-tall Falcon 9, SpaceX charges $62 million to send into orbit commercial satellites weighing up to 50,000 pounds. The closest American competitor is the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, which starts at $73 million for a 41,000-pound payload .

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Those are just starting prices; government agencies typically pay more for a long list of extra services. The Air Force, for example, is paying SpaceX $96.5 million to launch a GPS satellite in 2019 .

Flying to the International Space Station

Since NASA mothballed its space shuttles in 2011, NASA has relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the ISS. Russia has been steadily raising the price of Soyuz seats, reaching $82 million each in 2015. The agency last purchased Soyuz seats for $75 million apiece in 2017.

NASA hopes to end its reliance on Russia in 2019, when SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner capsules begin “taxi” flights to the ISS. Seats on those spacecraft are expected to cost about $58 million .

How much would I have to pay for a flight into space?

Depending on where you're going, a ticket could set you back anywhere from $250,000 to tens of millions of dollars.

If you're looking simply to cross the 62-mile-high Karman line that marks the boundary between the upper atmosphere and outer space, Virgin Galactic says it will take you there for $250,000. The company says about 650 people already have tickets for the suborbital flights, to be made aboard a winged vehicle called SpaceShipTwo. A date for customer flights has yet to be announced.

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, plans something similar — sending space tourists on brief suborbital flights using its New Shepard rocket system. The company has yet to set ticket prices or say when paid flights might begin.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin passengers will join the fewer than a dozen private citizens who have funded their own trips into space. From 2001 to 2009, the Vienna, Virginia-based firm Space Adventures worked with Russia’s space agency to send eight people to the ISS on flights lasting 10 or more days.

Space A colossal elevator to space could be going up sooner than you ever imagined

The world's first private astronaut, a wealthy American engineer named Dennis Tito, reportedly paid $20 million to spend eight days in space in 2001. More recently, Guy Laliberté, the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, shelled out $35 million for an ISS trip in 2009 . Space Adventures still advertises Soyuz flights and plans to start booking trips to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner.

In September 2018, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would ride the company’s yet-to-be-built Big Falcon Rocket on a trip around the moon. Neither Musk nor Maezawa, who said he would take along seven artists, would discuss the mission’s cost.

What about other rockets?

Small satellites may qualify for a free ride to space through NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program, which helps universities and research groups fly standardized satellites called CubeSats aboard rockets as secondary payloads.

If your satellite can’t hitch a free ride, you can book a NASA sounding rocket to the edge of space for as little as $1 million . For orbital flights of payloads weighing less than 500 pounds, Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab offers launches of its Electron rocket from New Zealand for about $5 million .

From there, the price goes up steeply. Northrop Grumman's Pegasus rocket, which is air-launched from the belly of a jumbo jet, can place 1,000 pounds in orbit for about $40 million . Stratolaunch, a new venture bankrolled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, plans to launch Pegasus rockets from its own colossal airplane before offering an expanded line of rockets capable of carrying up to 13,000 pounds. The company has yet to disclose prices.

NASA is developing its Space Launch System, which will carry astronauts to the moon and Mars. The rocket’s per-launch cost has not been disclosed, but the agency now spends at least $2 billion per year on the project. The maiden flight isn’t expected until 2020.

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How Much Will It Cost To Be a Space Tourist?

I n October 2021, actor William Shatner explored the final frontier as the oldest person to ever cross the Karman line — the commonly accepted divide between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

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Shatner traveled on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft, New Shepard, as the billionaire’s guest , per People . Other celebrities, including Michael Strahan, have also traveled on the New Shepard. Flights on the prestigious rocket range from free — if you are invited by Bezos — up to $28 million, according to Observer .

A flight on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital rocket plane costs $450,000, but it only reaches the edge of space, to an altitude of more than 50 miles. The New Shepard, on the other hand, reaches an altitude of 66 miles.

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Is Space Tourism Actually Going To Happen?

This decade has seen more civilians and non-astronauts venture into space than ever before. Yet, the space tourism industry hasn’t quite taken off as many expected.

In the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Spaceport America sits largely unused. The commercial spaceport cost $218.5 million in public money, funded partly by sales tax from local businesses. The venture was expected to bring in $550 million in economic activity for Sierra County and create roughly 4,300 jobs, The New York Times reported.

Yet, following the first flight carrying people in May 2021, the project has only generated roughly 800 jobs and brought in an extra $138 million to the county.

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Virgin Galactic Slows Operations for Spaceport America

Virgin Galactic, the spaceport’s primary tenant, made six launches this year but recently announced it would suspend flights in mid-2024 following layoffs that saw 185 employees let go.

The cutbacks were designed to enable Virgin Galactic to shift focus to a new class of suborbital space planes, putting launches from Spaceport America on the back burner temporarily.

Richard Branson — founder of the Virgin Group, parent company of Virgin Galactic — said the private space company holds about $1 billion in capital, enough to carry the company through 2026. “We don’t have the deepest pockets,” he told The Financial Times .

If space tourism is to become accessible, turning Spaceport America into the attraction the people of Truth or Consequences had hoped it could be, prices will have to drop. Meanwhile, the price of the cheapest ticket, unless you’re friends with a billionaire, is more than the median home price in the U.S., which is $411,887, according to Redfin.

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Money latest: TV star banned from flight over passport issue; 'child-free' pub triggers outrage

A new mother contacted us asking about her employment rights after maternity leave - and we've enlisted the help of a legal expert. Read this and all the latest consumer and personal finance news in the Money blog - and share your own Money Problem in the form below.

Monday 15 April 2024 20:59, UK

• Spotlight on unpaid carers: 'I'm a prisoner' - Mother spending pension looking after son, 41, with cerebral palsy
• Money Problem: My boss ruined end of maternity leave with ultimatum - what are my rights?
• TV star banned from flight over passport issue
• Financial markets take Middle East escalation in their stride

Essential reads

• How to earn thousands letting film and music stars shoot in your home
• Britons are buying homes, having babies, getting married and retiring later - but one key life event is happening earlier
• How your neighbour's garden could wipe up to £57,000 from your house price
• 'WTF is going on with the price of olive oil?'
• Cheap Eats: Great British Menu legend shares ultimate toastie recipe

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HMRC has overpaid its own staff millions of pounds over the past 10 years, according to The Telegraph. 

In total, £12.6m has been pocketed by employees but only £12.3m has been paid back, leaving a £300,000 shortfall. 

The news outlet said some 250 staff were overpaid by more than £1,000 last year. 

Some of the overpayments were caused by payroll failing to stop salary payments for people who had left the company, it added. 

The revelation comes after the tax office controversially decided to close its helplines for six months. 

"With a staff headcount of almost 67,500, we operate at a monthly payroll average accuracy rate of 99.54%, which exceeds the corporate benchmark of 98%," a HMRC spokesperson said.

"Our total pay bill in the 2022/23 financial year was £2.449bn* which means that 0.05% was incorrectly paid that year, and we have recovered over 84% of that.

"We have robust processes in place for the recovery of over and underpayments and all staff are provided with guidance on the importance of checking the payment of their salary."

Asda has become the first UK supermarket to launch an online prescription service. 

The Asda Online Pharmacy allows patients to manage prescriptions digitally and have them delivered to their home

All requests will undergo thorough checks by qualified pharmacists before being approved.

From today, new patients can register for the service by visiting pharmacy.asda.com. 

Dr Martens has filed a lawsuit against online retailer Temu for allegedly infringing its trademarks, according to The Times. 

The British bootmaker has alleged that the online retailer paid Google to advertise boots sold on its site when users search keywords including "Dr Martens", it said. 

As a result, Temu's lookalike products were placed about Dr Martens' own in search results. 

The move is the latest sign of growing hostility between Western retailers and their cheaper Chinese rivals. 

Temu told Sky News it was yet to receive the complaint and will review it in due course.  

Tesla is cutting 10% of its global workforce in a bid to reduce costs and bolster productivity, it has been reported.

The electric vehicle maker, founded and run by Elon Musk, was yet to comment on a story earlier today by Electrek that it was to axe about 15,000 people.

The tech publication said the cuts were revealed in an internal memo - also seen by the Reuters news agency.

It added that managers had been tasked earlier this year with identifying key personnel.

The company, which had more than 140,000 staff at the end of last year, has been struggling with soft demand for its electric vehicles.

The average UK tenant is spending 30.6% of their salary on rent, data shows.

Many experts believe that a third of your earnings is considered the outer limit for affordability.

But in several areas of the UK, people are spending considerably more, an index created by Canopy has shown.

Tenants in Poole have been found to be struggling most with affordability, with the average renter giving more than 40% of their income to their landlord. 

Stirling has also made a surprising inclusion in the top 10 places, with a low average income meaning tenants are spending 37.8% of their wages on rent. 

Belfast was found to be the most affordable major city for renters, with people spending just over a quarter of their salary in rent (23.2%), on average. 

Here are the 10 places people spend the highest percentage of their income on rent: 

Chris Hutchinson, chief executive of Canopy, said the data showed homeowners spend an average of 18% of their income on their mortgage. 

"It is sobering to see that one in five tenants are spending the vast majority of their salary on rental payments, and it neatly encapsulates the tricky situation that many tenants with aspirations of homeownership are in," he said. 

"Where we could see positive change is towards longer tenancies for those who desire them, fostering greater security for families and communities."

Up until 1995, children were effectively banned from all public houses in England and Wales, leaving parents with no option but to arrange - and in many cases pay for - alternative childcare if they wished to visit licensed premises.

Among other consequences of this change, legal guardians of all kinds have since been able to avoid such expenses by popping out for a pub lunch, for example, with their respective minors in tow.

However, while it is now perfectly legal for pubs to allow children in, it remains within the power of licensees to forbid the attendance of people under the age of 18. 

And while relatively few establishments choose to exercise this right, one such watering hole has sparked a rather intense debate around the issue.

In a post that had been viewed more than 18 million times at the time of writing, a man is pictured next to a sign indicating children (unlike dogs) are not permitted inside an unnamed pub - beneath a message that suggests the post's author approves of the policy.

While some on X expressed support or sympathy for the stance, many others were rather less sanguine.

Among the criticisms was the impact the stance might have on single parents - while others highlighted the financial drain of babysitters that might render a trip to the pub in question impossible for some parents.

The point was made by some users that other licensed premises were available for parents facing such a predicament. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, this seemingly pragmatic observation appears to have done little to quell the anger of those most outraged by the publican behind the child-unfriendly edict. 

It's no secret that electrical devices feast on your power supply even if they're in standby mode... 

But do you know how much these "vampire devices" are costing you? 

Energy expert Stephen Hankison says households could save £131 a year just by switching appliances off at the wall. 

The biggest savings can be made from unplugging games consoles, as these can cost you £32 a year on standby.

Gaming PCs (£21), TVs (£14) and desktop computers (£18) are also big drainers. 

"It's so simple but switching your appliances off at the wall really is the best way to ensure you’re not spending your hard-earned income on keeping things in standby mode," Mr Hankison, from Electric Radiators Direct, said. 

"£130 is a big food shop, two tanks of petrol or even a nice meal out. There really are much better ways to use this money than giving it to the energy companies."

Here's how much your devices are costing you on standby mode:

EasyJet has reminded customers to check their travel documents for damage after Vicky Pattison was turned away from a flight for having a chewed-up passport. 

The former reality TV star complained about EasyJet's decision on Instagram, calling the airline the "destroyer of dreams".

The 36-year-old was reportedly trying to fly to Italy to visit a potential wedding venue. 

Posting on her Instagram story, she said she had rushed back from Newcastle to be able to get the flight, and was "beyond gutted" to be turned away by staff. 

"I've been travelling with my passport all year and no one's said anything, but it's definitely well travelled to be fair. Company policy is company policy and I get it, I'm just beyond gutted," she said. 

Reacting to how news outlets have covered the story, she added: "My passport was damaged and I just hadn't realised. 

"I am not enraged, if anything I am a tiny squishy sad ball."

An easyJet spokesman told Sky News the airline was sorry for Pattison's experience, but that it is the "passenger's responsibility to have suitable documentation for travel". 

" At easyJet, we work closely with the authorities and comply with their guidance to ensure the safety and security of all passengers and staff," he said. 

"As such, we cannot allow any passenger to travel on their planned flight with documentation damaged to such a degree that its authenticity is brought into question." 

Shoppers have been warned not to eat olives sold by Waitrose over fears they may contain pieces of glass. 

The supermarket has recalled its jars of pitted Spanish queen olives, saying they are "unsafe to eat". 

"We are recalling a selected date of the above product due to possible glass contamination," it said in an important safety warning notice. 

Shoppers have been told to no consume the olives, package up the jar and return it to their local Waitrose for a refund. 

"We apologise that it has been necessary to recall this product and for the inconvenience caused," it added. 

TV presenter Kevin McCloud has criticised the "broken and dysfunctional" property market, saying it is being monopolised by big housebuilders. 

The Grand Designs presenter and designer said Britain was falling behind other European countries such as Germany and Sweden when it comes to housing development.

"If I were the housing minister, I'd be looking at ways to break this monopoly that two or three companies have over the market," Mr McCloud said. 

He argued that quality and innovation was being stifled by a lack of competition between developers, which in turn makes the market more sensitive to downturns. 

"We have effectively a broken market, a dysfunctional market, it has been hollowed out," he added. 

"It means that when we hit difficulty, those companies nosedive and they buy each other out." 

By James Sillars , business news reporter 

You would think that an attack by Iran on Israel involving more than 300 drones and missiles would drive up oil prices.

While Saturday's strikes failed to land a damaging punch, they have stoked fears of a wider Middle East conflict.

But the financial markets have taken the escalation in their stride.

Oil traders priced in the possibility of such Iranian aggression on Friday, 24 hours beforehand.

As such, a barrel of Brent crude is actually 0.5% down at $90 a barrel.

Analysts say the outlook depends very much on how Israel responds.

Stock market sentiment has taken a slight knock.

In London, the FTSE 100 followed Asia lower. It opened 0.2% down at 7,978.

Energy stocks were the main drag.

In wider UK stocks, car distributor Inchcape climbed 1.6% after it agreed a £346m deal to sell its UK dealership operations to car retailer Group 1 Automotive UK.

The Inchcape UK division consists of 81 sites, employing 3,600 people, and works with car manufacturers including Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Toyota and Volkswagen.

Every Monday we put your financial dilemmas or consumer disputes to industry experts. You can find out how to submit yours at the bottom of this post.

This week, Sky News reader AJ2024 asks...

"While on maternity leave my employer rejected my flexible work request and told me to pick from four new shift patterns or take redundancy if they didn't suit me. All new shifts were full working hours. No support as a new mother and ruined my last few precious weeks. What are my rights?"

Katie Wood, senior legal officer at Maternity Action, answers:

All employers have a legal duty to seriously consider all requests for flexible work. This includes any request to change your days, hours or place of work. From April this year, this is a day-one right and you can make up to two requests a year. To show that they have seriously considered a request, an employer is expected to meet with you to discuss the request.

An employer can refuse a request if they have good reasons and it would genuinely be difficult to accommodate a request. There are eight legal reasons an employer can give for refusing a request but these can be quite broad.

These reasons are: 

• The burden of additional costs
• The detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand
• The employer is unable to reorganise the work among existing staff
• They are unable to recruit additional staff
• The detrimental effect on quality
• The detrimental effect on performance
• There is not enough work during the periods the employee wants to work
• Planned structural changes

You can ask to appeal a refusal and can also put forward other options. It can help to ask for a trial period or try to find a compromise that would work for both parties.

An employer that insists on a particular working pattern, such as full-time working hours or variable shifts, may be at risk of an indirect sex discrimination claim as it disadvantages women who have more childcare responsibilities than men. 

If an employer rejects an appeal, employees should seek legal advice. There is a time limit of three months (less one day) for starting an employment tribunal claim. Employees must contact ACAS to start early conciliation within the time limit. ACAS have more information on rights to ask for flexible work on their website.

This feature is not intended as financial advice - the aim is to give an overview of the things you should think about. Submit your dilemma or consumer dispute, leaving your name and where in the country you are, in the form above or by emailing [email protected] with the subject line "Money blog". Alternatively, WhatsApp us  here .

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