The last, best hope for space tourism just rolled onto a runway in Arizona

It has been nearly a year since any space tourism flights occurred.

The short version

• The private space tourism era looked so very promising five years ago.
• Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic had begun flying customers—real people with zero space experience—on suborbital missions.
• And at about the same time, private citizens were going to orbit for days at a time aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

What happened

So we are now 10 months, and counting, without a space tourism mission in the United States. At the time of Unity ‘s final flight, Virgin Galactic said it was moving on to the second generation of its suborbital spacecraft.

Why it matters

It planned to bring two of these Delta-class ships into service by the year 2026.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.