The space tourism race between Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin heated up after Virgin's Richard Branson said Tuesday that his company would be in space "within weeks."
X
Here's a look at how the billionaire-backed commercial space tourism companies stack up:
Virgin Galactic
"We should be in space within weeks, not months. And then we will be in space with myself in months and not years," Virgin founder and CEO Richard Branson told CNBC.
In July, Virgin Galactic conducted its third powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo, which is named the VSS Unity.
The suborbital vehicle traveled to the upper atmosphere after a 42-second engine burn, marking the SpaceShipTwo test program's longest to date.
The cost of a space tourism flight on the SpaceShipTwo is $250,000. But Branson hopes for ticket prices to fall to $40,000 to $50,000 in the next 10 years.
Blue Origin
Blue Origin will put "people in space this coming year" aboard its New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle and crew capsule, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said at an Air Force conference last month.
It wasn't immediately clear if Bezos meant in the next 12 months or by the end of 2019. Blue Origin didn't return requests for comment.
Blue Origin will reportedly charge space tourism passengers about $200,000-$300,000 for the first trips, sources told Reuters in July.
SpaceX
Unlike Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin's plans to take tourists suborbital, SpaceX has lunar ambitions.
In September, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA), announced that SpaceX would send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and several other artists to be named on a trip around the moon. The trip is scheduled for 2023 aboard SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket.
Maezawa wouldn't say how much he paid as a deposit for the trip aboard the Big Falcon Rocket. But Musk said the amount will have a "material impact" on paying for the rocket's development.
SpaceX is also in competition with Boeing (BA) to become the first commercial company to take astronauts to the International Space Station next summer.
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