It is simply 120 years for the reason that Wright brothers strapped themselves to a rickety powered glider and flew all of 36 metres.
Now flying is so routine we barely give it a thought.
But Virgin Galactic has opened a brand new chapter within the story of aviation, taking its first tourists into space in a aircraft that is far sleeker, but nonetheless acquainted to anybody jetting again from their summer time vacation.
Read extra: Space launch - as it happened
The Unity spaceship has wings, an engine and a passenger cabin.
It takes off from a runway - albeit slung beneath the wing of a bigger plane - and climbs to a cruising altitude earlier than detaching and racing away to area.
Blue Origin, the corporate based by Amazon proprietor Jeff Bezos, already takes vacationers to area in a conventional rocket.
It's actually an genuine astronaut expertise, nevertheless it's a bone-shaking experience by way of the dense decrease environment and never for the faint hearted.
An area aircraft is a far gentler journey to the heavens.
Rocket or area aircraft, a ticket to experience is properly past the technique of most of us.
But then so had been the primary vacation flights in conventional plane.
It's solely with the daybreak of constitution flights that costs actually got here down.
The area tourism business will certainly discover methods of constructing related efficiencies.
You do not need to look too far into the longer term - actually not one other 120 years - to see spaceports recurrently launching day trippers for an expertise of lifetime.
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