Dearmoon
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is due to take a trip around the Moon, presumably in 2023, aboard a Starship rocket that is still under development by SpaceX. The mission is called dearMoon.
Virgin Galactic's experience involves an enormous carrier plane that takes off from a runway, reaches a high altitude, then drops a rocket-powered spaceplane which accelerates towards space.
The passengers and crew experience a few minutes of weightlessness at altitudes exceeding 50 miles (80 kilometers) -- the US definition of space.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson participated in a test flight on July 11 out of New Mexico.
The company is currently grounded pending an investigation over a flight "mishap." It hopes to have routine flights by 2022.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin also offers a few minutes of weightlessness, but at altitudes exceeding 60 miles (100 kilometers). Its astronauts thus breach the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.
The reusable rocket blasts off vertically, and the capsule detaches in flight.
Its descent back to Earth is slowed by three huge parachutes and a thruster.
The Amazon founder was among the first four passengers to make the trip from the company's west Texas base on July 20.
