These Billionaires Have Decided to Leave the Earth, Literally

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What would you do if you were a billionaire? So far, 11 billionaires have decided to leave the Earth, literally. Their flights point to the potentially lucrative space tourism industry that will become accessible to mere millionaires in the near future, and perhaps ordinary folk in a few more decades. We've scanned public media sources to bring you this compilation to fuel your investment decisions and dreams of reaching for the stars yourself.

24/7 Wall St. Insights

• Space tourism helps defray the enormous development costs of private spacecraft.
• The billionaires who have traveled to space have done so on Russian Soyuz flights or on private space flights managed by three different American companies.
• Send your investment portfolio through the roof with these 2 Dividend Legends To Hold Forever

How Much Does a Ticket to Space Cost?

Some space tourists have spent time aboard the International Space Station.

Space tourists pay anywhere from $250,000 to $50 million for the thrill of blasting off in a rocket, floating in weightlessness, and seeing the earth from a dizzying height. Some flights, such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, go to a suborbital level where the curvature of Earth and the blackness of space is visible, but it's controversial whether this technically meets the definition of space. Other tourists have caught a ride on Russian craft to the International Space Station and sometimes participated in science experiments. Next are the 11 billionaire space tourists to date.

1. Denis Tito

• Nationality: American
• Flight: Space Adventures / MirCorp ISS EP-1 (Soyuz TM-32/TM-31)
• Launch date: April 28, 2001
• Engineer, entrepreneur, first self-funded space tourist.

2. Mark Shuttleworth

• Nationality: South African
• Flight: Space Adventures ISS EP-3 (Soyuz TM-34/TM-33)
• Launch date: April 25, 2002
• Founder and CEO of Canonical, the company that developed the Ubuntu operating system.

3. Charles Simonyi

• Nationality: Hungarian-American
• Flight: Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-10/TMA-9
• Launch date: April 7, 2007
• 2nd flight: Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-13/TMA-12
• Launch date: March 26, 2009
• First space tourist to make the trip 2 times.

4. Guy Laliberté

• Nationality: Canadian
• Flight: Space Adventures Soyuz TMA-16/TMA-14
• Launch date: September 30, 2009
• Co-founder of Cirque du Soleil.

5. Richard Branson

• Nationality: British
• Flight: Virgin Galactic Unity 22
• Launch date: July 11, 2021
• Founder of Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Galactic.

6. Jeff Bezos

• Nationality: American
• Flight: Blue Origin NS-16
• Launch date: July 20, 2021
• Founder of Amazon

7. Jared Isaacman

• Nationality: American
• Flight: SpaceX Shift4 Inspiration4
• Launch date: September 15, 2021
• Founder of Draken International and Shift4 Payments.

8. Yusaku Maezawa

• Nationality: Japanese
• Flight: Space Adventures Soyuz MS-20
• Launch date: December 8, 2021
• Founded Start Today and Zozotown, Japan's largest online fashion retailer.

9. Larry Connor

Larry Connor flew on this SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the first fully private crew on a spaceflight.

• Nationality: American
• Flight: Axiom/SpaceX Ax-1
• Launch date: Feb. 21, 2022
• Head of the Connor Group, a Dayton-based real estate investment firm.

10. Eytan Stibbe

Axiom/SpaceX Ax-1 shortly after takeoff.

• Nationality: Israeli
• Flight: Axiom/SpaceX Ax-1
• Launch date: Feb. 21, 2022
• Former fighter pilot and founding partner of Vital Capital.

11. John Shoffner

John Shoffner, second from right, prepares to take off with the crew of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

• Nationality: American
• Flight: Axiom/SpaceX Ax-2
• Launch date: May 21, 2023
• Race car driver, investor, and pilot.

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