The world’s first luxury spaceflight experience company, Space Perspective, is taking space travel to a new level with its carbon-neutral, zero-emission extreme tourism offering.
The Spaceship Neptune is ‘built to be the most accessible, sustainable, & safest spacecraft on or above Planet Earth’, according to Space Perspective’s Twitter account. Flights in the innovative space lounge, which is towed to the edge of space and into the realm of science fiction by a Space Balloon, are booked up for the first year.
Jane Poynter is co-CEO and CXO of Space Perspective, former CEO of World View Enterprises, and co-founder, chairwoman and president of Paragon Space Development Corporation. She was first drawn to the notion of space flight as a founding member, along with Taber MacCallum, of the Biosphere 2 design team. Poynter was a crew member of the experimental project, originally meant to demonstrate the viability of closed ecological systems to support and maintain human life in outer space, as a substitute for Earth’s biosphere.
Biosphere 2
“Biosphere 2 was a very inspiring project,” she tells blooloop. “Taber and I were lucky enough to be involved in it right at the get-go when we were on the design team and inside. It was really our first visceral experience of what many call the overview effect, and what we call the ‘space perspective.’
“We lived inside the world’s first attempt at a human-made biosphere. It had a miniature rainforest, savannah, ocean marsh, and all the rest of it, that made up this little world. We knew, moment by moment, that our oxygen was coming from the plants around us, and the CO2 that we exhaled was making the food that we ate.”
“We could see the edges of our tiny world, and it became so viscerally clear and obvious, at a very fundamental level, that we are part of a biosphere, which, by extension, is our planetary biosphere, Planet Earth.”
She was in the Biosphere for two years:
“Taber and I arrived at almost the same time, in 86, 87. We were in the biosphere for two years and we started Paragon.”
Before Space Perspective
Paragon Space Development Corporation, which develops technologies for extreme environments such as outer space and underwater, was founded while Poynter and MacCallum were inside Biosphere 2.
“To finish the concept of why Biosphere 2 was so important to what we’re doing now,” she says: “It’s because the experience that astronauts have of seeing our planet in space is very similar to the experience that we had of seeing it from within the confines of our small biosphere.
“Ever since then, we’ve wanted to go to space ourselves, and to take as many people to space as possible to allow them to have this incredible experience.”
In the face of the environmental challenges facing the earth, Poynter feels the experience may afford a crucial new perspective.
“That is what gets me up in the morning,” she explains:
“The reason we call the company Space Perspective is exactly that. It’s not our job as a business to tell people how to think. It is our job to give people the most incredible experience that perhaps allows them to see our world in a way that they hadn’t before. I really do think it will open up new perspectives for people.”
A perspective shift
She envisages this perspective shift as something like the one experienced by astronauts on returning from space:
“You can see that astronauts get more involved in social and environmental causes when they return from space than before they left. It’s more sort of like perspective enhancement, that changes how they behave.”
She adds:
“I certainly would love to take world leaders to space.”
Founded in 1993, Paragon is committed to developing innovative, world-class engineering solutions related to Life Support and Thermal Control in Extreme Environments:
“It was all about learning about the systems that enable us to thrive in space,” she says. “The company today has technologies on every human spacecraft in operation in America today; SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the International Space Station, Dream Chaser, the whole lot.
“It has been really exciting to have seen the company grow. We designed spacecraft and we designed spacesuits, so not only do we understand what that experience is going to afford people when they go to space, but with Paragon, we understand how to build the capsule part of Spaceship Neptune. We also have an amazing team to enhance our knowledge and capabilities.”
Inside Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune
Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune comprises the SpaceBalloon, Reserve Descent System and Neptune Capsule. Unlike all other spacecraft whereby the crewed compartment separates from one flight system mid-flight and transfers to another flight system, Spaceship Neptune’s capsule remains secured to the SpaceBalloon the entire flight from liftoff to splashdown, creating a seamlessly safe and gentle flight.
Right at the end of their time at Paragon, Poynter and her team were approached by Google’s then senior vice president, who was planning an unusual sabbatical. Poynter explains:
“He wanted to break Felix Baumgarten’s Red Bull Stratos free-fall jump from the stratosphere and to do it in a very different, simpler, and, frankly, safer way. What we ended up doing was designing and building the first space suit that had been designed and operated in America in 40 years, which is crazy to think about.
“Then we literally hung him in the space suit underneath the space balloon, took him up to 136,000 feet, and intentionally dropped him. He free-fell for almost five minutes, broke the speed of sound, and came in for a safe landing.”
A unique experience
She adds:
“He has extraordinary stories of the experience of seeing Earth very slowly drop away. You go to space at 12 miles an hour under a space balloon; it’s incredibly gentle. He is a skydiver and pilot, so is used to being up above the earth, but the fact that it was so slow, he said, made him see our planet in a new way: it is not that big when you really look at it from that vantage point.”
Poynter and MacCallum were, at this point, already considering using balloons for space tourism:
“Now, here we are with Space Perspective, adapting that concept of taking a single human being to space under a space balloon, and reimagining it as a comfortable capsule with a space lounge.”
Making space accessible
The project, she stresses, is focused on making space as accessible to as many people as possible:
“The first step is reimagining the experience so that more and more people can envision themselves going. That starts with the whole experience of using a space balloon because it is so gentle. You don’t have those high-G forces; you don’t need much training.
“Next, we reimagined the interior. Instead of being a functional, austere, white interior, we have created a space lounge that, in some regards feels familiar. Outside the windows is this insane view, but we want people to feel comfortable, almost contemplative, if that’s what they want, as they go to space.”
“There are plants, which probably hearkens back to my Biosphere days. We are taking a little bit of Earth up to space, which I think is important – and it doesn’t hurt that some of those plants can be put in people’s drinks, because, obviously, there’s a bar.”
To make its occupants feel safe, the whole vehicle, she explains, is bulletproof.
Space Perspective and the rise of space tourism
“I’ve been working on space tourism since the early days,” says Poynter.
“This is not a big group of people; we pretty much all know each other. For us, as a business, what’s incredibly exciting is to see the demand, which is huge. We are looking at a total addressable market of half a trillion, with sales somewhere in the region of seven to eight billion by the end of the decade. The market is going to be limited by our ability to service that demand, not by the demand itself, for many years to come.”
“We have already sold almost 900 tickets in just over a year, which is amazing.”
This is impressive since the price of a single ticket is $125,000.
“We are going to space, after all. Our long-term vision is to bring the price down. I think our technology will enable us to do that as we scale the business.”
A wide demographic
Given the price, the target demographic consists of high-net-worth individuals. She qualifies this:
“It’s really broad-ranging. A lot of the early adopters are people that want to be the first, or who have dreamt all their lives of going to space. But we also have those who just want to have their family have this amazing experience together.
“We have a fairly strong cohort of people who are such fans of going to space that they’re saving up. About 12% are people that you may not think of as being the type that would afford to go. It’s across a whole spectrum.”
To date, around 80% of customers are from the US.
“That’s because the US is where most of our awareness is. I don’t think it speaks to the market. Almost 50% of our capsules have been bought as entire capsules because people want to invite their friends or their colleagues or families to join them on this great mission.”
Space Perspective’s first flights scheduled for 2024 have sold out.
The six-hour balloon trip will carry people 30 km above the Earth’s surface in the beautifully imagined, comfortable capsule.
A shared experience
“It’s a shared experience,” Poynter says. “This goes back to the design. When we originally started looking at the space lounge, we thought of it very classically. It was going to be all about sitting in front of the window, looking out at this amazing view: the majority of people say the primary reason they would want to go to space is to have this incredible experience of seeing Earth in space. We assumed, initially, that we would put everyone in front of the window.”
However:
“We played with over a hundred physical mockup orientations to see what the experience would feel like. It became apparent very quickly that this would make it a solitary experience.”
“This is a shared experience, so that’s where we came up with the concept of the Space Lounge: somewhere to hang out together in space. This isn’t about going to space to see the earth. This is about hanging out in space, sharing the experience with loved ones.”
As a result of this revelation, the team turned the seats around, to create two inward-facing arcs:
“People can now really converse about what they’re seeing with other people in the capsule, and with people on the ground. That was a critical insight, and one that I’m very excited about.”
Space Perspective: a bucket list experience
Poynter envisages that, as awareness spreads, the concept will evolve to become a bucket-list staple:
“I think of it as a little bit like when the Antarctic opened up, and people flooded to go there, and are still flooding to go there, because it’s such an incredible experience.”
“In terms of space flight, we think of ourselves as the gateway. This is how people get comfortable with the idea of space flight, understanding at a visceral level why it is so important. And then, of course, there’s much further to go. I think of it as space travel, not space tourism, because once you’ve gone on a suborbital flight, you will want to go further.”
The space balloon concept
The space balloon is the disruptive element, affording a gradual, gentle introduction to space:
“That was the ‘aha’ moment,” she says:
“I credit Speaker Taber with that. When he was a kid, his father flew enormous telescopes under these types of balloons and was on the team that discovered the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Taber remembers vividly seeing those balloons, and how majestic and graceful they were.”
“One day, when we had been racking our brains about how we could make space accessible, he walked into my office, and said, ‘What do you think about taking people to space under a giant balloon?’ I didn’t even have to think about it. It was one of those things that was so obvious when you heard it.”
A carbon-neutral company
The first test flight took place last year. She explains:
“We are currently in the process of manufacturing our capsule, and we will then be flying our first test flights with capsule, initially in an uncrewed configuration, autonomously, which allows an enormous number of test flights to be done really easily and safely, most likely Q1 next year. Then the plan is to have our first human test flight around the end of 2023, and are on plan to have our first commercial flights around the end of 2024.”
Faithful to the precepts of its Biosphere 2 roots, Space Perspective operates as a carbon-neutral company:
“That is hugely important,” Poynter stresses. She adds:
“There will be people, of course, who go to space and just have an awesome time drinking champagne at the edge of space. But there will also be people who come back, and who will never see themselves, the planet, or our human family in the same way again.
“That is incredibly powerful, and will have a ripple effect across society.”
