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Company on countdown to take tourists to edge of space

Angelique Soenarie
The Arizona Republic


A rendering shows how a high-altitude World View balloon will transport passengers to the edge of space.

PHOENIX — A Tucson company that is developing a high-altitude balloon capsule for space travel could help solidify Arizona as a destination for adventure tourism.

World View Enterprises says its capsule will take travelers more than 100,000 feet above Earth for a view that would cost $75,000. The operation would join a growing roster of adventure-tourism-related operations in the state, including the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving and Desert Splash Adventures, which offers aerial tours in Arizona.

"The luxury-experience market is growing 50 percent faster than the sale of luxury goods," said Jane Poynter, who heads World View Enterprises. "Experiences such as world cruises and treks through remote parts of the world are on the rise and carry similar price points to our spectacular, edge-of-space human flight experience."

World View, like many other high-end adventure-tourism ventures, aims to appeal to the traveler willing to pay thousands of dollars for an extreme experience of a lifetime, Poynter said.

World View hopes to take its first travelers to space at the end of 2016. The five-hour trip, which will include a meal and an open bar, will give tourists a chance to see the outer edge of Earth.

"It's really truly to allow people to have that experience that until now only astronauts have had, which is seeing the Earth in space," said Poytner, who was also involved in the Biosphere II project in Tucson.

World View says its fully pressurized flight capsule will accommodate six passengers and two crew members.

Poynter was one of eight people who agreed to live in Biosphere II, a sealed artificial world, for two years in the 1990s for research purposes. Afterward, she and Biosphere II colleague Taber MacCallum, along with several aerospace engineers, established Paragon Space Development Corp., which develops products and systems for astronauts and environment explorers.

Poynter's latest venture, World View, is still in a testing phase. The company plans to build a manufacturing facility in Tucson to build the balloon capsule, which will carry six passengers and two crew members, she said.

The company has been conducting test flights without passengers over the past year and a half, and Poynter hopes the company can start testing with people at the end of 2015.

Poynter did not disclose the number of tickets World View has sold, but she said the company has received interest from all over the world.

Backing the business is a legislative bill that was passed this year that would allow people to waive the right to sue during a space flight. The provision allows World View to obtain the insurance necessary to conduct flights in the state.

World View joins a commercial space industry for private citizens that is starting to take off. Virgin Galactic in California hopes to take people to space in its jetlike spaceship for $250,000 in the near future.

But leading the way in commercial space tourism is Virginia-based Space Adventures, which started in 1998 and has flown seven private explorers into space. Explorers pay an estimated $50 million, which includes equipment and training for several months before going on a 10-day-plus trip on the International Space Station.

World View has yet to submit an application to be licensed and insured. To be granted an FAA license, a company must meet safety and environmental standards and ensure that the operation does not compromise national security interests.

"I do believe that this is going to be a really magical and transformational experience for people," Poynter said.

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