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Virgin Galactic will launch the budding space-travel industry sometime within the next year, the company says, when it begins ferrying aspiring cosmonauts on 90-minute suborbital trips. Passengers will spend four minutes floating in zero gravity, check out the curvature of the Earth, and be home in time for dinner. So far, 600 customers have booked seats at $250,000 apiece.

But for those with loftier space-travel ambitions—and deeper pockets—there is a slew of new luxury start-ups that want to install you in regal floating hotels that will actually orbit the Earth. You’ll need a hearty checkbook. And maybe some baby wipes.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based firm, intends to offer a 10-day cruise around the Earth in its luxury space station that will include Wi-Fi, custom-designed leisure suits, and a padded, cream-colored interior dreamed up by French designer Philippe Starck. In advance of takeoff, 15 weeks of astronaut training will be provided.

The price of admission is $55 million, which means the market is small, admits Amir Blachman, Axiom’s vice president for strategic development. Few wealthy tourists spend more than a small percentage of their net worth on a single trip. “It’s in the hundreds,” Blachman says of the number of potential clients.

Space start-ups are fighting for ways to stand out. As passengers sit back and watch sunrises and sunsets—all 16 of them that travelers will see every day as they orbit the Earth—Houston-based Orion Span will ply them with Space Wine, a specially formulated vino in packaging classier than the glorified juice pouches from which astronauts typically sip, says CEO Frank Bunger.

The company has already persuaded 26 would-be space walkers to put down refundable $80,000 deposits for a 12-day, $9.5 million journey. Whether the company can actually hit that price target, given current transport costs, remains uncertain.

Also unclear: when any of this will happen. In September, Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur, became the first customer of Elon Musk’s space-tourism company, SpaceX, on a weeklong trip around the moon for an undisclosed sum—in 2023. Axiom wants to send tourists into space as soon as 2020, and Orion Span, the year after. But Jeffrey Manber, CEO of Nano-Racks, a Webster, Texas–based company that currently delivers commercial payloads to the International Space Station, thinks a four- to six-year timeline is more realistic. “Space encourages a lot of hype,” Manber says. “A lot of people have wanted it to be true since Jules Verne.”

A quick Blade helicopter flight to the Hamptons this is not. The journey will be grueling. Passengers on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital flights will experience a minute of thrust, peaking at Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound, or about 2,300 miles per hour), while orbital passengers will white-knuckle through eight minutes of terror that reaches Mach 25—or a whopping 19,182 mph.

“ At this point in time, you’re talking about a frontier. That’s why we call them outposts. This is not Las Vegas. ” — Jeffrey Manber

“Eight and a half minutes is a long time to sit and wonder if today is going to be the day you get it,” writes Mike Massimino, a mechanical engineer who flew to space on a mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, in his 2016 book Spaceman.

It won’t get much easier once you dock at the space hotel. There is a 50% chance you’ll experience space sickness, which is like being on a small boat in rough chop. “You have to get your space legs,” Manber says.

NanoRacks aims to build space outposts by refurbishing the interiors of spent rocket boosters after they deliver payloads. The plan would save money on costly fuel. Crew from the International Space Station—or perhaps even robots—would construct living quarters inside the boosters, which could be used as a hotel for tourists.

Manber may have a cure for gurgling space stomachs, as well: bundle several of his outposts together and spin them, generating moon-level gravity on board for a few days to let passengers acclimate before total free float.

But Manber, who is the former CEO of MirCorp, the Russian company that famously almost sent singer Lance Bass to space, tries to keep expectations of lavish luxury to a minimum. “At this point in time, you’re talking about a frontier,” he says. “That’s why we call them outposts. This is not Las Vegas.”

Showers in space will feature dry shampoo and a rudimentary sponge bath. Going to the bathroom will still essentially mean going into a tube.

Even a space selfie may be disappointing: In zero gravity, blood flows to the upper extremities and head, causing bloating in the face.

The fact is that only seven tourists have ever made it to space. From 2001 through 2009, Virginia-based Space Adventures arranged deals with Russia’s space agency to send brave and deep-pocketed souls to the International Space Station for $20 million to $40 million a trip.

Until transport costs come down—the trip up and down constitutes most of the price tag—Axiom’s $55 million ticket means that most travelers will be on a working vacation that will include courting corporate sponsors, testing medical devices, and even aging whiskey. In 2011, NanoRacks sent a vial of scotch to the International Space Station. When it returned to Earth three years later, Ardbeg Distillery’s director proclaimed that it had a “different set of smoky flavors, which I have not encountered here on Earth before.”

More than anything, space tourists will be pioneers, part of mankind’s much grander journey. As Bunger puts it, “What I want to see when I’m lying down to go to the happy place in the sky is people colonizing space.”