Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown - Devdiscourse

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.

The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company's first rocket-riding tourists.

“Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.

Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles (160 kilometers), the passengers savored views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.

The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travellers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969.

Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, “I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this.” They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2's Bono.

Reed anticipates as many as six private flights a year for SpaceX, sandwiched between astronaut launches for NASA.

Four SpaceX flights are already booked to carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former NASA astronauts.

The 60-year scorecard now stands at 591 people who have reached space or its edges — and is expected to skyrocket as space tourism heats up.