Photo: Trip.com

Trip.com's luxury travel platform recently listed a space tour package priced at 5.1 million yuan ($759,900) and higher, offering pre-flight training followed by an orbital space-flight experience, according to its official WeChat account.

The six-day itinerary departs from Las Cruces, US. The first four days are devoted to pre-flight preparation and training. On the fifth day, passengers will board US space tourism company Virgin Galactic's air-launched spacecraft for a 90-minute suborbital flight.

According to the itinerary, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and view Earth from space through the spacecraft's 17 windows. After completing the flight, they will receive commercial astronaut recognition from the Association of Space Explorers.

Before the flight, passengers will undergo simulator-based training, including centrifuge training, G-force tolerance exercises, parabolic flights, sensory-overload training, emergency-response drills, and equipment-operation training, aimed at improving their ability to cope with unexpected situations.

The package is currently the most expensive publicly available space tour on the Chinese market. Its listing has triggered widespread discussion on Chinese social media.

Some netizens marveled that viewing Earth from space is no longer a distant dream reserved for professional astronauts, while others pointed to the prohibitive price of commercial space travel. The discussion reflects a mixture of excitement and concern as space tourism moves closer to ordinary consumers.

Virgin Galactic is developing its next-generation spacecraft, with the first new vehicle now expected to enter commercial service in February 2027, pushed back from an earlier target date of the fourth quarter of 2026 to allow more time for avionics and systems installations, according to the company's statement.

According to Virgin Galactic's second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Virgin Galactic opened bookings in April for a limited tranche of 50 spaceflight expeditions priced at $750,000 per person. By August 12, the tranche had been oversubscribed, adding more than $50 million to the company's expected future spaceflight revenue.

Global Times