Space tourism blasts off with anti-gravity joyrides and plans for floating hotels

Vacation-ifying space… As space tourism companies work toward a future where spring breaks happen near Saturn, joy flights are already operational. The superrich are jetting off to the high stratosphere and completing astronaut training to visit the International Space Station. Space tourism’s next horizon? Full-on space vacays. One startup, Above: Space Development, is working on building two luxury space-station hotels (picture: huge floating rings), which it says could be completed within five years of securing $1B+ in funding. Meantime, Hilton Worldwide made a deal to operate a space hotel with a planned 2027 launch.

Billionaires in space… Unlike in other areas of the space biz (which you’ll read about in a sec), Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of interstellar tourism’s smaller players. Just a handful of civilians have flown on its rocket to the ISS on a single trip that reportedly cost $55M per seat. Meanwhile, 32 folks have gone intergalactic on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets (one tourist paid $28M at a charity auction) and 55 have gone anti-gravity on up-to-$450K space-skimming rides with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Startups not owned by famous billionaires are also looking skyward, like Halo Space, which aims to offer stratospheric balloon rides for star-seekers on a budget (still $50K to $200K).

It’s gonna be a long, long time… until you use a moon emoji as your Slack away message. Some experts have predicted that global space tourism could hit $1.7B in 2027. But considering how expensive each jaunt toward Jupiter costs, it may not be a big industry — at least not until mid-century, when some predict space cos could make the Jetsons’ lifestyle more affordable.