Luxury space travel company Orbite plans international expansion

Orbite has raised $4 million in series A funding to grow its private luxury astronaut business and develop its Spaceflight Gateway Campus

White Desert Base Camp Echo in Antarctica. Orbite will offer immersive space travel experiences designed to replicate life on the Moon or Mars. Photo: Orbite

The space training company Orbite, which offers budding astronauts luxury immersive experiences to prepare them for space travel, has banked $4 million in its latest round of fund-raising.

Founded by entrepreneurs Jason Andrews and Nicolas Gaume in 2019, Orbite already offers five-day suborbital training and zero-gravity experiences but the expansion of operations means going much further into the concept of what it would be like to live in space, or on other planets.

For example, experiences on offer in Paris next year will include cooking classes run by expert chefs from Michelin-star restaurants on how to prepare food in space, while the sea-diving charters in the Caribbean will host guests in a mini-submarine designed to mimic the environment of being inside a space capsule.

"What Orbite is doing is offering, on a regular basis, very unique experiences," Mr Gaume, executive chairman of Orbite, told The National. "We want to make sure you understand what's going to happen [in space]. We also want to make sure you savour and value what you're going to learn, and enjoy it even more. A lot of people come to us without really knowing what it is."

Essentially, the company is recreating the experience of being in space, down on Earth in luxury settings. It is seeking to combine luxury accommodation, lectures by experienced astronauts and visits to national space facilities with some of the rigour of Nasa's training and education models.

As part of the luxury accommodation aspect, Orbite has teamed up with Accor, one of the world’s leading hospitality companies, and will advance its plans to create its Spaceflight Gateway Campus. Orbite will launch its Experience Train Fly schedule in 2025, which will feature living in space habitats of the future in Paris, as well as a specialised programme focusing on wellness and the physical demands of space, in Curacao in the Caribbean.

“Our global customers are eager to participate in the growing space economy,” Mr Andrews said. “Our Experience Train Fly programme and our partnership with Accor offer a unique opportunity for people to experience space today in a luxurious setting.”

Unique experiences

While the likes of Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Axiom may be at the frontier of actual physical space tourism and safety training, Orbite sees its role as preparing people for what life in space would be like. "So, before you actually spend millions to fly with Virgin, Axiom, Blue Origin, Space X or others, you may want to try what it is and meet astronauts who tell you what's really happening," Mr Gaume told The National.

Eventually, Orbite plans to open Spaceflight Gateway Campuses around the world, first at Cape Canaveral in Florida, then the Middle East and Asia. The idea is to create a one-stop shop for luxury space experiences, training and accommodation, which Mr Gaume says requires "a lot of bold ambition" and "a certain amount of investment", as well as key partnerships, such as that with Accor hotels.

"If everything goes fine, we'd like to start construction next year, or the year after, and open a couple of years afterwards," he told The National. "But at this stage, our goal is to leverage infrastructure and partner infrastructure. So, we have the Paris event in the spring. We have another event later in the year and eventually we'll have one event per quarter. We're also making tailor-made events to really get the space-curious satisfied and make sure we create a gathering of people with space enthusiasm."