But unlike most of its competitors, it isn't using rockets or spaceplanes to bring people to space — it's using balloons. Space Perspective, co-founded by Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, plans on gently lifting its passengers — or "explorers," as the company prefers to call them — 100,000 feet into the sky aboard Spaceship Neptune, a reusable pressurized capsule raised by a 650-foot-tall, hydrogen-filled balloon.

"Following the return of human spaceflight from U.S. soil just a few weeks ago, people have never been more excited about space travel," MacCallum said in a statement. "Few endeavors are more meaningful than enabling people to experience the inspiring perspective of our home planet in space for the betterment of all, and that's what we are accomplishing with Space Perspective."