Space tourism company breaks record with high-altitude balloon flight

An Arizona company says it has successfully completed the first small-scale test flight of a high-altitude balloon and capsule being developed to let tourists float 20 miles above the Earth.

The wispy, transparent balloon lifted its payload to 120,000 feet after launching last week from an airport in Roswell, New Mexico. Jane Poynter, CEO of Tuscon-based World View Enterprises, said Tuesday that the system broke the world record for highest flight for a parafoil — a combination of a parachute and a wing, carried aloft by the balloon.

"It went really, really, really well," Poynter said. "Actually, the guys hit the ball out of the park. We're thrilled."

With NASA’s space shuttle program shuttered, and the United States relying on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to ferry passengers to and from the International Space Station, private U.S. firms have stepped in — with one earning a multibillion-dollar contract from the space agency to take cargo and trash back and forth. Commercial space tourism for average – and wealthy – people remains the industry’s final frontier.

The system has a balloon similar to that used in 2012 to lift Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner 128,000 feet to make a world-record breaking 24-mile sky dive. That flight also launched from the Roswell airport. The town itself is famous for its ties to an alleged UFO crash in 1947.

Poynter said that last week's flight was the first to test all the components together. It used a balloon about a third the size of that planned for passenger flights to lift a payload of about one-tenth of what the company plans to use to carry passengers.

The company plans to begin its $75,000-per-person flights in 2016, she said. The balloons will lift a capsule carrying six passengers and two crewmembers 20 miles up, where they will float under a parafoil for about two hours before floating back down to earth. The capsule will be big enough for the passengers to walk around.

The selling point is the view of the Earth and seeing its curve, the company says. Other space-tourism ventures under development will rocket passengers the full 62 miles into space but on much shorter flights.

In filings with the Federal Aviation Administration, World View said it planned to launch its flights from Spaceport America in New Mexico. But Poynter said Tuesday that no final decision has been made on where to base the flights.

Spaceport is where Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first space-tourism flights at a cost of $200,000 per person. Development of Virgin's spacecraft has taken longer than originally planned, and it is unclear when the company, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will make its first flight. The company's newest target date is the end of this year, but it has said that for each of the last several years.

"I don't think anyone considers us in a race," Poynter said when asked if World View might beat Virgin Galactic to passenger flight. "We don't consider us in competition because the experience is so completely different."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press