The same company that makes many of the airliners carrying passengers around the world will now be carrying passengers to low Earth orbit. Boeing announced today it has signed a memorandum of agreement with Space Adventures to develop and market the private space rides.

Space Adventures is the company that has put together several orbital trips for private individuals to the International Space Station. The companies have not announced what the cost of a ride to orbit will be, or when the first rides will occur. Trips could include visits to the ISS or to other orbital stations to be built in the future. Boeing is already partnering with Bigelow Aerospace on a commercial space-station program to be built later in the decade.

The passenger flights will take place on commercial trips aboard the Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft to low earth orbit. In addition to individuals with enough money, rides will also be offered to companies, nonprofits and federal agencies besides NASA. The seven-passenger spacecraft is expected to be operational by 2015.

The announcement from Boeing is the first from one of the existing, large space-contractor companies to offer transportation to space for private individuals. Space Adventures has previously contracted with the Russian space agency to offer rides to orbit. Those rides started at $20 million, but costs have climbed to as high as $40 million for a single passenger.

The agreement with Boeing is likely to create some competition for the Russians and may help keep costs down for cargo and passengers.

Upstart space launch company SpaceX has also talked about delivering passengers to low earth orbit. In the near future the company is focused on delivering cargo payloads to the ISS, but SpaceX's Dragon capsule is expected to carry passengers to orbit as well.

For suborbital passenger flights, Virgin Galactic released a new video today with information about the company's space flights aboard VSS Enterprise (aka SpaceShipTwo). Several hundred people have already signed up for the flights, which will include several minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from more than 65 miles above the surface.

Photo: Boeing

Video: Virgin Galactic