The most rarefied bed-and-breakfast ever built is located not very far from you—just 250 miles away. The trick is, it’s 250 miles straight up. The not-so-little inn is the International Space Station, which over the course of its 24-year life has hosted a handful of tourists paying upward of $20 million per seat to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
On April 8, 2022, the U.S. got in on the game as Houston-based Axiom Space launched its first crew of three paying tourists and a mission commander (an Axiom employee) for a 15-day ISS stay. The three tourists paid $55 million each for their fortnight-plus in space. Axiom plans more such space-tourist flights in the future. The price is steep, but for deep-pocketed adventurers, the incomparable view, not to mention the thrill of weightlessness, makes it worth it.
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