Arizona firm plans $75,000 balloon flights to the edge of space 19 miles up in luxury capsule big enough to boast a bar! World View Enterprises announced plans Tuesday to send people up in a capsule, lifted 19 miles by a high-altitude balloon The flight would take 90 minutes to go up at about 1,000 feet a minute, set sail up high for 2 hours The luxury capsule will allow passengers to walk around and get a drink from the bar The latest space tourism venture aims to send paying customers to the edge of space and give them the same awe-inspiring view that adventurer Felix Baumgartner stared down upon last year - all for $75,000 a ticket. Depending more on hot air than rocket science Arizona start-up, World View, has unveiled plans for a balloon ride to the stratosphere, offering passengers about two hours of space-like views from 19 miles above Earth. While it's not quite space - that starts at 62 miles - the plan requires approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial space. To the edge of space: World View Enterprises announced plans Tuesday to send people up in a capsule, lifted 19 miles by a high-altitude balloon. Jane Poynter, CEO of the Tucson, Ariz.-based company, said the price for the four-hour ride would be $75,000 The company expects to begin flight tests of a demonstration vehicle this year in Arizona and plans to start selling tickets at $75,000 per person within a few months, said Chairwoman and President Jane Poynter - with commercial flights by 2016. 'There are balloons this size that have already flown up many, many times for decades,' Poynter said. From a technical point of view this is incredibly doable, low risk. The selling point is the view of the Earth and seeing its curve, she said. The venture isn't designed for passengers to experience weightlessness. Indeed, the flight will be more like that of Red Bull daredevil Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian adventurer who leapt from a balloon 24 miles above the Earth, smashing the sound barrier during his descent and landing safely. Dream flight: The selling point is the view of the Earth and seeing its curve, she said. The venture isn't designed for passengers to experience weightlessness Lift-off: Initially, six passengers and two pilots would be aboard a pressurized capsule that is still under development 'We promise we won't open the door and have you jump back to Earth,' Poynter joked. The flight would take 90 minutes to go up at about 1,000 feet a minute, set sail up high for 2 hours with an emphasis on smooth riding, hit an altitude of 19 miles and then come back down in 40 minutes, Poynter said. The capsule's interior will be roomy enough for its eight passengers to walk around and even get a drink at an on-board bar - but unfortunately there will be experiencing of weightlessness. 'Seeing the Earth hanging in the ink-black void of space will help people realize our connection to our home planet and to the universe around us, and will surely offer a transformative experience to our customers,' Jane Poynter, World View's chief executive officer, said in a statement. The flight would take 90 minutes to go up at about 1,000 feet a minute, set sail up high for 2 hours with an emphasis on smooth riding, and then come back down in 40 minutes Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria jumps out of the capsule during the final manned flight for Red Bull Stratos on October 14, 2012 in space We look forward to pioneering this new, accessible and affordable spaceflight regime, and to sharing the breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime experience with people from around the globe. By comparison, rides aboard SpaceShipTwo - a suborbital six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle owned by Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group - is expected to reach about 68 miles. At that altitude, passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness in addition to seeing the curvature of the Earth set against the black sky of space. World View capsules would be propelled by a 40 million cubic-foot (1.1 million cubic-meter) helium balloon and a steerable parafoil, an inflatable wing-shaped parachute - which would steer them gently to the ground once they disconnected from the giant helium balloon. Outside magazine space expert Scott Pace, a former NASA associate administrator now space policy director at George Washington University, agreed that this is technically feasible. Pole position: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two flies over the Mojave Desert in California as it continues its test flights ahead of its first commercial flight next year Entrepreneur Richard Branson takes a press conference on his decade-old Virgin Galactic space project in 2012 He said the issue is whether there's enough of a market for it to be financially doable, calling it 'an interesting market test.' Pace said the while there are many space tourism ventures, it is not quite right to call the field growing. It is still embryonic. A few people have paid tens of millions of dollars to fly to the International Space Station and others have paid to fly in high altitude jets. But how many people will pay for near space experiences, he asked. Poynter said she has no doubt that there's a market with other firms like Virgin Galactic selling so many tickets for yet-to-fly rides. 'Space tourism is here to stay,' said Poynter, who also runs the space firm Paragon Space Development Corporation. Virgin Galactic: Headed by the charismatic British billionaire and adventurer Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic and their Space Ship 2 became the highest commercial winged vehicle in September The spacecraft shot to 69,000 feet above the Earth's surface and the company claims it is on track to put paying customer's into space in 2014 The SS2 is launched from a large aeroplane, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground. Sir Richard Branson first unveiled the rocket plane on December 7, 2009 and 18 months later took selected people on short-hop trips just above the atmosphere. The SS2 is 18 metres long and has two pilots and room for six passengers. Tickets cost $250,000 per person and 600 have been sold up to June this year. Celebrities who have snapped up tickets, include Stephen Hawking, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Katy Perry. Passengers will experience approximately six minutes of weightlessness during the two-hour flight. XCOR Aerospace: The California based firm are in developmental stages of a jet which will take its passengers from New York to Shanghai in 2 hours. XCOR Aerospace claims its Lynx spacecraft can travel at a speed of more than 2,500 mph - and dozens of miles above the earth - before safely landing at an airport. The Lynx's main engines run with the help of flight weight rocket piston pump hardware and liquid oxygen. XCOR COO Andrew Nelson has said that flights between Tokyo and New York are likely to be available within the next 20 years While the view may not be as expansive as what SpaceShipTwo can offer, it will last longer. Project developers expect the capsule to linger in the middle of the stratosphere for about two hours before returning to the ground. The descent should take 25 to 40 minutes. A World View ride would cost less than one-third of the $250,000 it will cost to fly on SpaceShipTwo. So far, about 650 people have put down deposits or paid for rides on the latter, which is undergoing testing at manufacturer Scaled Composites" facility in Mojave, California. Virgin Galactic aims to begin passenger service next summer, Branson said last month. Virgin Galactic and others have shown that the luxury market has shifted from high-end goods to high-end experiences, Paragon co-founder and Chief Executive Taber MacCallum told Reuters. 'We found we could put together a business plan that closed in a ticket price that is not too different from other luxury experiences, like a high-end safari and things like that,' MacCallum said. The FAA letter describes World View's initial launches as taking place from New Mexico's Spaceport America, a commercial port whose anchor tenant is Virgin Galactic. Poynter said the firm is looking at several U.S. launch sites. For added safety and for landing, a steerable parafoil will remain deployed and attached to the capsule throughout the ride, Poynter and MacCallum said. 'The balloon you're under is the thickness of a dry cleaner bag. It's very thin material by necessity to get you so high. That's where the technical risk lies. The risks of decompression of the spacecraft or life-support systems failures are really pretty small. We've got lots of redundant systems and we can return to lower altitudes pretty quickly,' MacCallum said. There is a chance - and every once in a while you see in scientific ballooning - of a balloon failure. That's really what took us to having this para-wing, or parafoil always open so that from just about any altitude the vehicle could safely glide back,' he added. She and her husband earlier this year proposed a private venture to send a married couple to Mars in 2018. In the early 1990s she and her husband Taber MacCallum, who serves as World View's chief technology officer, spent two years as 'bionauts,' sealed inside Biosphere II, a huge, greenhouse-like structure built in the Arizona desert.