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Flights with space tourists.
Following the definition that a civilian is someone who is not part of their country's armed forces (not in active duty; former service or reservist status is not considered being part of armed forces), [1] these are suborbital space flights (spaceflight according to US 50 mile space boundary definition) with a fully civilian crew:
Flights with space tourists.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company develops commercial spacecraft and provides suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS Unity spaceship. Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, but the date was delayed, primarily due to the October 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise.
The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.
The Scaled Composites Model 348 White Knight Two (WK2) is a quadjet cargo aircraft that was used to lift the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft to release altitude. It was developed by Scaled Composites from 2007 to 2010 as the first stage of Tier 1b, a two-stage to suborbital-space crewed launch system. WK2 is based on the successful mothership to SpaceShipOne, White Knight, which itself was based on Proteus.
VSS Unity, previously referred to as VSS Voyager, is a retired SpaceShipTwo-class suborbital rocket-powered crewed spaceplane. It was the second SpaceShipTwo to be built and was part of the Virgin Galactic fleet. It first reached space as defined by the United States on 13 December 2018, on the VP-03 mission.
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is a private spaceflight industry group, incorporated as an industry association for the purposes of establishing ever higher levels of safety for the commercial human spaceflight industry, sharing best practices and expertise, and promoting the growth of the industry worldwide. Issues that the Commercial Spaceflight Federation works on include, but are not limited to, airspace issues, FAA regulations and permits, industry safety standards, public outreach, and public advocacy for the commercial space sector.
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 year 2023 saw rapid growth and significant technical achievements in spaceflight. For the third year in a row, new world records were set for both orbital launch attempts (223) and successful orbital launches (211). The growth in orbital launch cadence can in large part be attributed to SpaceX, as they increased their number of launches from 61 in 2022 to 98 in 2023. The deployment of the Starlink satellite megaconstellation was a major contributing factor to this increase over previous years. This year also featured numerous maiden launches of new launch vehicles. In particular, SSLV, Qaem 100, Tianlong-2, Chollima-1,and Zhuque-2 performed their first successful orbital launch, while SpaceX's Starship – the world's largest rocket – launched two times during its development stage: IFT-1 and IFT-2.
Galactic 07 was a crewed sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity, which launched on 8 June 2024. It was the final launch of Unity.