Daring space enthusiasts will be delighted to learn that a Spanish entrepreneur plans to offer a near-space experience 36km above the earth in a revolutionary, balloon-inspired vehicle.
José Mariano López-Urdiales, the founder of Zero2Infinity, plans to introduce his ‘Bloon’ by the middle of this decade, claiming it will allow paying passengers – to the tune of an estimated $156,000 – to view the curvature of the earth and the electric blue atmosphere above its horizon during a five to six hour journey.
The forward-thinking inventor said he looked to the past rather than the future when designing this 120-meter diameter flying machine: "The first people who described the earth as a blue ball were not in rockets," he said. "They were flying in balloons."
"A balloon stays for a longer time than a ballistic parabola," he explained. "A suborbital vehicle is limited by the laws of ballistics and only lasts a few minutes. It can only last so long where the sky is black and the view is beautiful."
López-Urdiales first made worldwide headlines when he flew a Spanish national jersey on a balloon during a test flight over the 2010 World Cup.