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Definition: space tourism


Traveling into space for the experience. While 2021 was a banner year for civilian space travel, only extremely wealthy people have been able to afford the experience: Richard Branson reached 53 miles in a brief ride in his Virgin Galactic rocket; Jeff Bezos topped that at 66 miles in his Blue Origin rocket, also a short ride, but four non-astronauts in Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket reached 357 miles and traveled for three days (they did, however, spend months in training).

From Tourism to Travel
Initially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per person, space tourism is expected to be brought down to more "earthly" levels in the future. Eventually, space tourism is planned to become space travel, but not to distant planets, rather to be able to cut a trip from New York to Tokyo, for example, in just an hour.