After years of development, suborbital space tourism looks ready to lift off after Virgin Galactic successfully launched its first fully-crewed suborbital mission to space on July 11 following several prior crewed suborbital tests. The Unity 22 mission came just days before Blue Origin is scheduled to make its first passenger suborbital mission no earlier than Tuesday, July 20 using its New Shepard system.
Both companies have been developing suborbital spacecraft for over a decade, with the ultimate goal of carrying paying customers to the edge of space and back along with an added commitment to take science experiments along on some but not all of those flights as well.