World View launches ‘Stratollite’ balloon from Spaceport Tucson for the first time
World View Enterprises successfully launched a balloon from Spaceport Tucson, Arizona, its headquarters and production building, marking its first liftoff from the purpose-built stratospheric launch facility.
The flight was a test run for future Stratollite missions, which could offer Earth-monitoring capabilities like satellite missions, but at a fraction of the cost. The four-year-old company's balloon-borne platforms have the ability to rise to altitudes higher than 100,000 feet, which is only a third of the way to the internationally accepted 100-kilometer boundary of outer space.
World View's ultimate goal is to provide stratospheric launch services for space tourism, taking passengers on hours-long flights, providing space-like views of Earth and the black sky above from a pressurized gondola. World View already offers balloon launches from other testing grounds in Arizona, including NASA-funded experiments, and a widely publicized mission that sent a KFC chicken sandwich into the stratosphere in June. The ticket price for World View's future Voyager flights is $75,000. The company operates the Tucson facility on behalf of Arizona’s Pima County, which built the balloon launch pad and production building under the terms of a $15m deal struck in 2016.
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