This is a list of billionaire (USD) space travellers. [1] [2]
Billionaire | Spaceflight | Launch Date | Arrival Date | Notes | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dennis Tito | Space Adventures / MirCorp ISS EP-1 (Soyuz TM-32/TM-31) | 28 April 2001 | 6 May 2001 | First billionaire in space, orbital space; first space tourist to the International Space Station | [3] [1] [4] | ||||
Mark Shuttleworth | Space Adventures ISS EP-3 (Soyuz TM-34/TM-33) | 25 April 2002 | 2 May 2002 | First insured space tourist; First South African, first person from Africa in space, orbital space; second space tourist to the International Space Station | [3] [1] [5] [6] [7] [8] | ||||
Charles Simonyi | Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-10/TMA-9 | 7 April 2007 | 21 April 2007 | First spaceflight | First two-time space tourist | [9] | [3] [10] | ||
Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-13/TMA-12 | 26 March 2009 | 8 April 2009 | Second spaceflight | [11] | |||||
Guy Laliberté | Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-16/TMA-14 | 30 September 2009 | 11 October 2009 | First Canadian space tourist; Last space tourist before the U.S. STS Space Shuttle programme shut down, and increase in long-term ISS crew to 6, leading to a decade without space tourist flights to the ISS | [3] [1] [12] [13] | ||||
Richard Branson | Virgin Galactic Unity 22 | 11 July 2021 | 11 July 2021 | First billionaire to fly in his own spacecraft into space, above the 80km McDowell line to suborbital space; First fully occupied SpaceShipTwo flight | [2] [14] [15] | ||||
Jeff Bezos | Blue Origin NS-16 | 20 July 2021 | 20 July 2021 | First billionaire to fly in his own spacecraft above the 100km Karman line into suborbital space; First wholly commercial civilian flightcrew-less flight into space, suborbital space; First crewed Blue Origin launch | [2] [14] [15] [16] | ||||
Jared Isaacman | SpaceX Shift4 Inspiration4 | 15 September 2021 | 18 September 2021 | First wholly commercial civilian flightcrew-less flight into orbital space; Fourth crewed SpaceX launch | [2] | ||||
SpaceX Polaris program Polaris Dawn | NET 2024 | NET 2024 | First flight from the Polaris program. | [17] | |||||
Yusaku Maezawa | Space Adventures Soyuz MS-20 | 8 December 2021 | 20 December 2021 | First spaceflight | Maezawa is set to become the first tourist around the Moon | [2] | [18] | ||
SpaceX dearMoon | TBA | TBA | Circumlunar flight aboard SpaceX's Starship | [19] | |||||
Larry Connor | Axiom/SpaceX Ax-1 | 21 February 2022 | 21 February 2022 | First flight for AxiomSpace, first private spaceflight to the International Space Station | [14] [20] [21] | ||||
Eytan Stibbe | First Israeli space tourist. Second Israeli in space, orbital space. | [14] [20] [22] | |||||||
John Shoffner | Axiom/SpaceX Ax-2 | 21 May 2023 | 31 May 2023 | [23] | |||||
Color | Value |
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Flown | |
Currently in space | |
Scheduled future flight | |
An astronaut is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the term is sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists.
Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be remotely operated from ground stations on Earth, or autonomously, without any direct human involvement. People trained for spaceflight are called astronauts, cosmonauts (Russian), or taikonauts (Chinese); and non-professionals are referred to as spaceflight participants or spacefarers.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism.
Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights, and other spaceflight-related experiences including cosmonaut training, spacewalk training, and launch tours. Plans announced thus far include sub-orbital and lunar spaceflights, though these are not being actively pursued at present. Nine of its clients have participated in the orbital spaceflight program with Space Adventures, including one who took two separate trips to space.
Private spaceflight refers to spaceflight developments that are not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA.
Spaceflight participant is the term used by NASA, Roscosmos, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for people who travel into space, but are not professional astronauts.
The Soyuz TMA-16 was a crewed flight to and from the International Space Station (ISS). It transported two members of the Expedition 21 crew and a Canadian entrepreneur from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the ISS. TMA-16 was the 103rd flight of a Soyuz spacecraft, the first flight launching in 1967. The launch of Soyuz TMA-16 marked the first time since 1969 that three Soyuz craft were in orbit simultaneously.
The International Space Station programme is tied together by a complex set of legal, political and financial agreements between the fifteen nations involved in the project, governing ownership of the various components, rights to crewing and utilisation, and responsibilities for crew rotation and resupply of the International Space Station. It was conceived in September 1993 by the United States and Russia after 1980s plans for separate American (Freedom) and Soviet (Mir-2) space stations failed due to budgetary reasons. These agreements tie together the five space agencies and their respective International Space Station programmes and govern how they interact with each other on a daily basis to maintain station operations, from traffic control of spacecraft to and from the station, to utilisation of space and crew time. In March 2010, the International Space Station Program Managers from each of the five partner agencies were presented with Aviation Week's Laureate Award in the Space category, and the ISS programme was awarded the 2009 Collier Trophy.
Jared Isaacman is an American entrepreneur, pilot, philanthropist, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder of Draken International, a private air force provider and the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a payment processor. As of February 2023, his estimated net worth is US$2 billion.
The Boeing CST-100Starliner is a class of two partially reusable spacecraft designed to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS) and other low-Earth-orbit destinations. It is manufactured by Boeing for its participation in NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule and an expendable service module.
Artemis 2 is the second scheduled mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first scheduled crewed mission of NASA's Orion spacecraft, currently planned to be launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) no earlier than September 2025. Four astronauts are to perform a flyby of the Moon and return to Earth, being the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission is also planned to be the first crewed launch from Launch Complex 39B of the Kennedy Space Center since STS-116 in 2006.
The billionaire space race is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing. This private spaceflight race involves sending privately developed rockets and vehicles to various destinations in space, often in response to government programs or to develop the space tourism sector.
The dearMoonproject is a lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. It will make use of a SpaceX Starship spacecraft on a private spaceflight flying a single circumlunar trajectory around the Moon. The passengers will be Maezawa and eight other civilians, and there may be one or two crew members. The project was unveiled in September 2018 and was scheduled to launch in 2023. It has since been indefinitely delayed until Starship completes development. The project objective is to have eight passengers travel with Maezawa for free around the Moon on a six-day tour. Maezawa said that they expect the experience of space tourism to inspire the accompanying passengers in the creation of something new. If successful, the art would be exhibited some time after returning to Earth with the goal of promoting peace around the world.
Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom Space, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Soyuz MS-20 was a Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) on 8–20 December 2021. Unlike previous Soyuz flights to the ISS, Soyuz MS-20 did not deliver any crew members for an ISS Expedition or serve as a lifeboat for any crew members on board the station. Instead, it was commanded by a single professional cosmonaut and carried two space tourists represented by company Space Adventures, which had executed eight space tourism missions to the ISS in 2001–9. The flight to reach the ISS took six hours.
Axiom Mission 1 was a privately funded and operated crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was operated by Axiom Space out of Axiom's Mission Control Center MCC-A in Houston, Texas. The flight launched on 8 April 2022 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft used was a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The crew consisted of Michael López-Alegría, an American born in Spain and a professionally trained astronaut hired by Axiom, Eytan Stibbe from Israel, Larry Connor from the United States, and Mark Pathy from Canada.
The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International Space Station program. American space manufacturer SpaceX began providing service in 2020, using the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and NASA plans to add Boeing when its Boeing Starliner spacecraft becomes operational no earlier than 2025. NASA has contracted for six operational missions from Boeing and fourteen from SpaceX, ensuring sufficient support for ISS through 2030.
Inspiration4 was a 2021 human spaceflight operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The mission launched the Crew Dragon Resilience on 16 September 2021 at 00:02:56 UTC from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A atop a Falcon 9 launch vehicle. It placed the Dragon capsule into low Earth orbit with mission termination on 18 September 2021 at 23:06:49 UTC when Resilience splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.
Polaris Dawn is a planned private human spaceflight mission, operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, scheduled to launch no earlier than summer 2024. The flight will be using a Crew Dragon capsule, and is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris program.
The Polaris Program is a planned human spaceflight program organized by businessman and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman. Isaacman, who commanded the first all-civilian spaceflight—Inspiration4—in September 2021, purchased flights from SpaceX in order to create the Polaris Program. The first two flights will use the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, while the third flight is planned to be the first crewed Starship flight. Polaris Dawn, the first flight, will attempt the first private spacewalk.