Mercedes this morning let us know it's teaming up with a company called Space Perspective, which will offer customers a first-class ticket to space via a balloon.
Well, not space. The vehicle they'd fly is trademark-dubbed the SpaceBalloon, but the targeted altitude is 100,000 feet. That's well shy of the 50-mile boundary for space recognized by NASA, and even shier of the internationally recognized Kármán Line at 100 kilometers . Though because the atmosphere simply gets thinner the higher you go, there's no real hard boundary to space, so calling it space is fair game. Air Force legend Col.
Best of all, the spacefarers will be taking part in a six-hour journey: two hours each for ascent and descent, and two hours at altitude. Other space tourism operations featuring suborbital flights are at peak altitude for mere moments. Unlike those flights, the balloon customers won't experience weightlessness as they won't be in freefall.
For some perspective on what 100,000 feet is like: In 1960, Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger rode a balloon to 102,800 feet —before his drogue parachute deployed at 18,000 feet. His records for highest jump and fastest speed achieved by a human without an aircraft went unbroken for 52 years. Then in 2012, Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner rose to 127,852 feet, parachuted, and became the first human to break the sound barrier with his body, hitting 843.6 mph. He opened his chute at 8,400 feet.
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