By copying SpaceX, a Chinese agency offers you space for $200,000!
Advertising brochure for the Deep Blue company. © Deep blue
5 minutes of microgravity, that is to say weightlessness, and as a bonus see the Earth, for real! Like Yuri Gagarin and the few five hundred rare human beings who have had the privilege of contemplating the splendor of the earth's cradle majestically in space, this is what Deep Blue promises you. The trading company was only founded in 2016 by Huo Liang.
This Chinese commercial space agency therefore announces commercial suborbital flights for 2027. The first launch will be for 3 amateur astronauts. They must be aged 18 to 60, pass a physical fitness test and follow a short training course one month before the flight. They will tour space in a vehicle 4 m high and 3.5 m in diameter with a maximum capacity of 6 passengers. This capsule is a little reminiscent of the Crew Dragon, right?
Comparison of the Deep Blue recovery capsule and Space X's Crew Dragon. © Deep Blue / Space
The Nebula-1 looks like a SpaceX Falcon 9!
The launcher, the Nebula-1, would reach a maximum altitude of 100 to 150 km maximum and Deep Blue announces 50 reuses of its launcher. This seems a bit optimistic.
In any case, it is difficult not to recognize the great artistic and technical influence of SpaceX and its Falcon 9: the Nebula-1 carries 9 engines arranged in a circle, like the Falcon 9, the same type of fins, landing legs foldable and the same cover. When we put them next to each other, it's quite obvious:
Comparison of the Nebula 1 and its fairing with the Falcon 9 and its fairing. © Deep Blue / Space
For $200,000, they will also be entitled to some souvenir goodies as you can see on their brochure :
Goodies offered by Deep Blue for the purchase of a suborbital flight.
© Deep Blue
Here comes a new challenger!
This company is not the first to offer commercial spaceflight: Space The Nebula-1 launcher is also not quite ready as seen in the film below. But another version, the Nebula-2, is already in the works and it will have approximately the same power as Elon Musk's beloved Falcon 9.
Deep Blue was not far from successfully recovering its Nebula-1 by vertical landing after a flight of 5 to 10 km in September 2024. Of course, it remains an explosion and a failure, but we can clearly see that it is not lacking not much. The next recovery test is scheduled to take place in November 2024.
