“Just four minutes, ₩1 billion” ... What’s behind the “ultra-luxury trip” that attracted 675 people who booked

[Financial News] A space-travel package costing about ₩1 billion for just four minutes of experiencing zero gravity will return next year.
According to industry sources on the 3rd, U.S. private space travel company Virgin Galactic recently unveiled its next-generation spaceplane, “Apeiron,” and is working to resume commercial flights in the second quarter of next year.
The package will carry six passengers to an altitude of about 87 km, where they will experience zero gravity for 3–4 minutes. It is priced at $750,000 per seat (about ₩1 billion).
As of the end of June this year, Virgin Galactic had about 675 people booked for spaceflights. The company said that additional bookings, offered at $750,000 since April, had also sold out ahead of schedule.
At least 100 of the customers with bookings have begun preparations for their actual flights.
Apeiron will not launch directly into space from a runway. It will be carried aboard the twin-fuselage mothership “VMS Eve” to an altitude of about 13.7 km before separating. It will then ignite its own rocket engine to climb higher, complete the zero-gravity experience and glide back down to land.
Its maximum altitude of about 87 km falls short of the 100-km Kármán line, widely recognized internationally as the boundary of space. However, it exceeds the 80-km altitude recognized in the United States as the boundary of space.
Apeiron can carry six passengers, two more than the four aboard the previous spaceplane, “VSS Unity.” Virgin Galactic aims to fly each vehicle twice a week, for up to eight flights a month.
The previous Unity flew about once a month. Virgin Galactic plans to reduce Apeiron’s maintenance burden and increase its flight frequency to expand its commercial operations.
On the 28th of last month (local time), Apeiron completed its first transfer flight from a production facility in Mesa, Arizona, to Spaceport America in New Mexico. It traveled attached to the mothership Eve and did not fire its own rocket engine.
Virgin Galactic plans to resume commercial flights in the second quarter of next year, after conducting further test flights. A second vehicle is also under construction, with flights targeted for late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of next year.
The name Apeiron comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “infinity.” It was selected through a public vote involving thousands of people from 83 countries.
Meanwhile, competitor Blue Origin said in January this year that it would suspend suborbital space-tourism flights for at least two years and focus on developing a lunar lander.
[email protected] An Gaeul Reporter