There are now more ways to reach outer space than at any point in history, but all of them require either extraordinary qualifications or extraordinary wealth. Roughly 643 people have crossed the internationally recognized boundary of space at 62 miles (100 km) above sea level. Your path up depends on whether you want to pursue a career as a professional astronaut, buy a ticket on a commercial flight, or experience the edge of space through newer, lower-cost alternatives.
What Counts as “Outer Space”
The answer depends on who you ask. The international standard, set by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, places the boundary at the Kármán line: 62 miles (100 km) above sea level. NASA and the U.S. military use a lower threshold of 50 miles (about 80 km). Both definitions put space well above where commercial aircraft fly (around 7 miles up) and above 99% of Earth’s atmosphere. Any route to space needs to get you past at least one of these lines.
The Professional Astronaut Path
Becoming a NASA astronaut is the most competitive route but also the one where someone else pays for your ride. NASA opens applications roughly every few years and typically receives over 12,000 for a handful of slots. The baseline requirements are strict: U.S. citizenship, a master’s degree in a STEM field (engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science, or mathematics), and at least three years of related professional experience after completing that degree. Pilots can substitute 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time, with at least 850 of those in high-performance jet aircraft.
A completed medical doctorate or two years of work toward a STEM doctoral program can also satisfy the education requirement. Test pilot school graduates qualify as well. Beyond the resume, candidates must pass NASA’s long-duration spaceflight physical. That means vision correctable to 20/20 in each eye, blood pressure no higher than 140/90, and a standing height between 5’2″ and 6’3″.
If selected, you enter a roughly two-year training program before becoming eligible for a mission assignment, which itself could take additional years. Other space agencies like ESA, JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency have similar pipelines with comparable requirements and timelines. This path is realistic mainly for people already deep into STEM careers, military aviation, or medicine.
Buying a Suborbital Ticket
Suborbital flights are the fastest and, relatively speaking, most accessible way for a private citizen to reach space. These flights launch you past the boundary of space, give you a few minutes of weightlessness, and bring you back down without ever reaching orbital speed. The entire experience lasts under an hour from takeoff to landing.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule carries passengers above the Kármán line, where they experience roughly two to three minutes of weightlessness before the capsule descends under parachutes. The company has not publicly listed fixed ticket prices, but seats have sold in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range. Virgin Galactic, which uses a rocket-powered space plane, previously charged $450,000 per seat and raised that to $600,000 for its most recent customers. The company paused flights to develop a new vehicle and has indicated prices will climb even higher when service resumes, expected around 2026.
The key distinction with suborbital flights: you cross the space boundary but never reach the speeds needed to orbit Earth. There’s no sustained time in space, no orbiting the planet. Think of it as a vertical leap rather than a lap around the track.
Orbital and Space Station Missions
Reaching orbit is a fundamentally different experience. An orbital spacecraft needs to travel at roughly 17,500 miles per hour to stay in orbit, compared to the relatively gentle arc of a suborbital hop. That speed difference means far more intense forces on launch and reentry, a heat shield capable of handling temperatures that suborbital flights never encounter, and missions lasting days to months rather than minutes.
Private citizens can book orbital missions through companies like Axiom Space, which arranges trips to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. The price tag is around $55 million per person for roughly eight days on the station. NASA charges visiting private crews for life support at $11,250 per person per day, plus $22,500 per person daily for supplies like food and air. Even the data plan costs $50 per gigabyte. SpaceX has also sold private orbital missions directly, like the Inspiration4 and Polaris programs, though those were funded by billionaire sponsors rather than sold as individual tickets.
For anyone with the budget, orbital flight offers something suborbital trips cannot: sustained weightlessness, sunrises every 90 minutes, and days spent living in space rather than visiting it for a few seconds.
High-Altitude Balloon Flights
A newer category sits below the official boundary of space but still offers a dramatic view of Earth’s curvature. Space Perspective is developing a pressurized capsule called Spaceship Neptune that rises under a giant balloon to approximately 100,000 feet, above 99% of Earth’s atmosphere. The six-hour round trip is gentle, with no rocket engines, no significant G-forces, and no supersonic speeds. Tickets are $125,000.
This option won’t earn you astronaut wings. At roughly 19 miles up, you’re well below both the 50-mile and 62-mile space boundaries. But for people who want the overview effect (seeing Earth against the blackness of near-space) without the physical intensity or million-dollar price of a rocket flight, it fills a gap that didn’t exist a few years ago.
What the Training Looks Like
Professional astronauts train for years, but even paying customers need preparation. For orbital and suborbital rocket flights, participants go through centrifuge sessions designed to simulate the G-forces of launch and reentry. NASA’s centrifuge protocol for commercial crew missions ramps up to about 3.5 G on ascent and 4.5 G during descent and abort scenarios, with peak forces sustained for up to 120 seconds at a time. That means your body feels three and a half to four and a half times its normal weight, pressing you hard into your seat while you practice operating touchscreens and flight hardware.
Flight surgeons monitor participants before, during, and after each session. Beyond the centrifuge, training typically includes emergency procedures, familiarization with the spacecraft, and for orbital missions, learning to live in microgravity: how to eat, sleep, use the toilet, and move through a space station without bouncing off walls. Suborbital passengers get a condensed version, often completed in a few days. Orbital crew members train for weeks or months.
What Space Does to Your Body
Suborbital passengers spend so little time in weightlessness that the physical effects are minimal. Orbital stays are a different story. In microgravity, your body starts losing bone density at a rate of 1 to 2% per month, concentrated in weight-bearing bones like the hips and spine. Muscles atrophy without the constant work of fighting gravity. Fluid shifts toward your head, which can affect vision over longer stays. Astronauts on the ISS exercise roughly two hours every day to slow these losses, and recovery after returning to Earth can take months.
For a short private mission of eight to ten days, these effects are modest and reversible. For anyone dreaming of longer stays, or eventual trips to Mars, the physical toll becomes a serious factor in planning and recovery.
Realistic Costs at a Glance
- High-altitude balloon (not technically space): $125,000 for a six-hour flight to 100,000 feet
- Suborbital rocket flight: $450,000 to $600,000 or more for a few minutes past the space boundary
- Orbital mission to the ISS: approximately $55 million for about eight days in orbit
- NASA astronaut career: free ride, but requires years of education, elite credentials, and a selection rate well under 1%
The cost gap between suborbital and orbital reflects the enormous difference in energy, hardware, and risk involved. Getting to space is hard. Staying there is orders of magnitude harder. Every option on this list was unavailable to private citizens just 15 years ago, and prices have been trending downward as more vehicles enter service and competition increases.