Being weightless for a few minutes and being able to admire the curvature of the earth from a height of 100 kilometers: from July the space company Blue Origin, owned by businessman Jeff Bezos, wants to bring tourists to space for the first time.

The plan is to make the maiden flight on July 20 with the New Shepard spacecraft. There is room for six paying travelers on board. The price of a flight has not been disclosed, but a ticket would cost several tons.

The spacecraft sinks back to Earth with passengers after the flight. The craft is neither going high nor fast enough to orbit the Earth.

SpaceX

Businessman Elon Musk’s competitor SpaceX is already bringing professional astronauts to the space station ISS. Later this year, he also plans to conduct a fully commercial spaceflight. Musk wants to have a Japanese businessman fly around the moon in a few years.

SpaceX first brought humans to the space station ISS last year. That was  the first time  that a company had succeeded. Until then, only the Soviet Union and Russia, the United States and China had put humans into orbit.