China is setting its sights on space tourism, with tech start-up Deep Blue Aerospace making headlines by selling its first two tickets for suborbital space flights set to launch in 2027.
Priced at 1.5 million yuan, or about $210,000 per seat, these inaugural tickets sold within 20 minutes during a live-stream event on Taobao, the e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba.
Deep Blue, based in Jiangsu province, confirmed that each flight would allow travelers a 12-minute journey with at least five minutes of weightlessness in space.
The company’s chairman, Huo Liang, described the event as a step towards making commercial space travel more accessible.
"Ticket prices at several hundred thousand yuan may soon become a reality," Liang noted, referencing the goal to lower costs as rocket technology advances.
Deep Blue’s program will include suborbital flights, meaning rockets will reach space but not fully orbit the Earth. The company emphasized the mission’s safety measures, detailing that they plan to conduct numerous tests over the next two years to ensure the reliability and security of these flights.
The pricing of Deep Blue's tickets at $210,000 has sparked excitement on Chinese social media, where users are buzzing about the potential affordability of domestic space travel.
One Weibo user commented, "For most people, this is a very luxurious trip, but compared to tickets elsewhere … this is a bargain."
With reusable rocket technology as a crucial component for bringing down costs, Deep Blue’s flights significantly undercut global competition. Virgin Galactic, for example, charges $600,000 per seat for its space journeys, while Blue Origin and SpaceX continue offering their exclusive but costly experiences.
Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial mission last August, joining other international giants in the space tourism sector, yet China's competitive pricing strategy has the potential to disrupt the market.
More tickets are expected to be available next month, with Deep Blue setting an ambitious roadmap to make space travel a reality for adventure seekers and perhaps, eventually, more affordable to the broader public.
