Over the past few years, space tourism companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace have sold hundreds of tickets for suborbital rocket trips, with the first paying passengers scheduled to get their rides as early as next year. But the rockets are essentially big roller-coaster rides, with the exciting portion at the top of the arc lasting just a few minutes.

By contrast, World View’s balloon and capsule, with six passengers and two crew members, would take about an hour and a half to reach altitude and then drift for a couple of hours before the balloon was jettisoned and the capsule would glide back to Earth beneath an inflated parasail. “We really think there is a market for being able to contemplate the view,” said Taber MacCallum, the company’s chief technology officer.

World View’s trips would be less expensive than the rocket rides: Virgin Galactic charges $250,000 and XCOR $95,000.

The principal shortcoming: you would not actually get to space, nor would you get to call yourself an astronaut afterward. The balloon would rise about 18.5 miles, not quite a third of the way to the 62-mile altitude that is considered the beginning of outer space. But it is high enough to view the planet’s curvature and for the sky to darken from blue to black.