There are balloon rides, and then there are balloon rides. And although it may sound like something out of a Jules Verne novel, a company called World View says it will begin taking passengers to the edge of outer space by the end of 2017. In a step toward that goal on Tuesday, company officials confirmed that the first flights will take place in southern Arizona near the Tucson International Airport.

World View plans to fly six passengers in a pressurized cabin to an altitude of 30km, where they will remain for a couple of hours. The generally accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space is 100km, known as the Kármán line. However, at 30km, or about 100,000 feet, the balloon will have risen above 99 percent of Earth’s atmosphere and afford fine views of the planet’s curvature and the blackness of space. The company has priced tickets at $75,000 per person for an experience that will last four to six hours in total.

The company is relying on established technology, as well as new innovations, to bring humans to the edge of space. Weather balloons have flown into the stratosphere for nearly a century. High altitude balloons, like the one World View will use, are made of a high performance polyethylene film. When inflated with helium, at its maximum altitude, World View’s balloon will be about the size of a football field.

The newer technology involves returning safely to the ground. Although the balloon will climb to altitude at a rate of about 300 meters per minute, drifting with air currents, during the descent a parafoil will allow a pilot to fly the capsule and parafoil like a glider to make a pinpoint lander. Unlike vehicles such as the space shuttle, which entered the atmosphere at 17,500 mph, the balloon will start its descent much lower, at a velocity of essentially zero.

“Rather than trying to bleed off a whole bunch of energy, we’ve been working to get to the point of where we have enough energy to fly, but still be able to fly in a controlled manner,” Taber MacCallum, World View’s chief technology officer, said in an interview. “We’ve been asking ourselves, 'How do we initiate aerodynamic flight out of what would otherwise be a free-fall tumble?'”

The company had a chance to test out its balloon technology in October, 2014, when former Google executive Alan Eustace rose 136,000 feet into the stratosphere and then, in a self-contained spacesuit, safely jumped back to the Earth’s surface.

World View followed up that work with one percent and 10 percent scale tests, and the company intends to do a full-scale test “in a couple of months,” Jane Poynter, the company’s chief executive, told Ars. During that test, the company will lift the mass of the capsule up to 100,000 feet to test all of the flight and descent systems of the balloon and parafoil. After those tests are complete, the company plans to build the capsule itself, complete with 360-degree views and Internet access to allow social sharing of the experience.

On Tuesday, the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved a $15 million proposal to build a new headquarters and manufacturing facility for World View in Tucson, which will include a launch pad to be called Spaceport Tucson. As part of the deal, the company has agreed to grow its workforce from less than 50 employees to more than 400 in five years.

The big question with space tourism companies, especially after repeated delays of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and its promise of suborbital flights, is when the vehicle will be ready to fly. Commercial flights are presently scheduled to begin in 2017.

“We’re very confident that we will get to commercial flights,” Poynter said. “This isn’t a rocket flight. It’s certainly spaceflight, and it’s not simple, but it’s not rocket flight. We’re not creating a technology to get us up to space. Will it be exactly 2017? That I can’t tell you. But it won’t be a 10-year slip. If anything it will be months, not years.”