Flying Tourists To The ‘Edge of Space’

Since the retirement of Concorde turbojet in 2003, only the military has had access to flying faster than the speed of sound, but now Swiss company MiGFlug are offering adventurers the opportunity to fly higher and faster than ever before in a MiG-29 military jet.

Customers can reach heights of up to 20-22 kilometres in good weather, and 17 kilometres is guaranteed for each flight - only astronauts can reach higher into the stars.

While a commercial flight cruises at an average of ten metres per second, MiGFlug fliers climb into the sky at a rate of 330 metres per second.

Adventurers are given high altitude outfits, oxygen masks, a medical check up and training before they take off from Nizhny Novgorod airbase in Russia.

Budding pilots can even control the jet on the descent and a wide range of daredevil manoeuvres are on offer - including rolls, breaking the sound barrier by flying at supersonic speed.

The flights used to be performed in a MiG-25 jet, which could climb to 25 kilometres, but after the jets became unavailable the MiG-29 took over.

MiGFlug representative Philipp Schaer said: “We tried to design a unique product that goes beyond acrobatics and supersonic flying.

“The so-called Edge of Space flight is something really special.

 “Customers can see the curvature of the Earth, surrounded by a thin blue layer, the atmosphere.

“The sky above is black and covered in countless stars, even in the day time.”

Each flier experiences an average G-force of 7.5g and customers can even try weightlessness.

After twelve years of Edge of Space flights, MiGFlug remains one of the only companies worldwide to offer civilians the chance to break the sound barrier and fly at supersonic speed.

At €16,500 per fifty minute flight - equivalent to almost $18,500 - the experience is not yet available to everyone, but it is the first step toward global space tourism.

Find out more at http://www.migflug.com/