With a 5.1 million-yuan space trip on offer, who has secretly secured the two "spaceship tickets" from Trip.com?

According to Red Star News, Virgin Galactic's 2027 space travel tickets were launched on Chinese travel platform Ctrip, with the number of sold tickets initially shown as 681, which soon changed to 2.

The figure 681 was a pure "misoperation". According to customer service explanation, 681 refers to the total number of globally sold orders from Virgin Galactic, while the 2 tickets displayed on the page are the confirmed reservations received by Ctrip's Honghu system. If you place an order now, you will not travel with the previously booked tourists, as they made their reservations much earlier.

Ctrip's customer service emphasized that a deposit of 150,000 US dollars is required for reservation, and the deposit will not be refunded if the trip is canceled. There are far too many incoming orders at present, and the team will call back customers after strict screening. If someone is willing to pay 5.1 million yuan through the Chinese channel, what kind of people are the ones placing the orders?

Price Breakdown: What do you get for 5.1 million yuan?

First, let's clarify a fact that is easy to mislead. The ticket price of the same batch on Virgin Galactic's official website is 750,000 US dollars per ticket, which is equivalent to about 5.4 million yuan at the current exchange rate. Ctrip's pricing of 5.1 million yuan is actually slightly lower than the US dollar price on the official website. The "5.1 million yuan" mentioned in the news is not a story of "price markup for the Chinese market", but essentially a story of "channel distribution".

So what exactly can you get for 5.1 million yuan?

According to the detailed disclosure of Beijing Business Today, this "spaceship ticket" covers a 6-day itinerary in total. The first 4 days include spaceport exploration, simulation cabin training and full rehearsal respectively. On the 5th day, you will take an air-launched spacecraft to experience a 90-minute suborbital flight, and you will return on the 6th day. The fee includes accommodation, meals and airport transfer during the 4-day training period, as well as customized spacesuits, astronaut badges, pins of the Society of Space Explorers, flight videos and photo materials.

The excluded contents are equally critical: international round-trip air tickets, US visa fees, insurance, and "additional costs for extended holidays". The pre-costs that buyers need to bear by themselves are far more "discouraging" than the 5.1 million yuan itself - but obviously, people who are willing to pay 5.1 million yuan will not care about spending tens of thousands more on visa processing and air tickets.

Who is buying? Virgin Galactic has given its customer profile

Prichard, Chief Commercial Officer of Virgin Galactic, rarely disclosed the customer profile at an industry conference in July 2026.

The age range is surprisingly wide:

"There are young people aged from 28 to early 30 who have achieved professional success, and also people over 55 who want to take multi-generational trips."

The wealth status is also beyond expectation: among the about 650 "future astronauts" community of Virgin Galactic at that time, "half are high-net-worth individuals, and the other half are not". Prichard said in his original words: "If you know you can afford it, you will go; if you are excited enough about it, you will find a way to go."

This means that "space tourists" are not a label that only belongs to the super-rich. A considerable proportion of Virgin Galactic's customers are fanatic pursuers who regard space flight as the "ultimate experience in life", rather than top rich people who spend money purely for entertainment. Prichard relayed an astronaut's words: "The reason why I make money all my life is to have this experience."

Earlier data corroborates this point: the youngest member of Virgin Galactic's "future astronauts" community is 7 years old, and the oldest is 86 years old, with customers from about 60 countries.

Who is paying for the "2 tickets" on the Chinese channel?

Ctrip's customer service said that at present "there are too many incoming consultations, and the team will call back customers after screening". This sentence contains a lot of information: the number of consultations far exceeds the actual conversion volume. For Chinese consumers, the 5.1 million yuan price tag is first a kind of curious product that is "accessible for consultation", and then a serious consumption decision.

A reference comparison comes from the domestic market. A 2025 report from Shangguan News shows that the number of consultations for space travel products has increased by 350% year on year, and the customer group is "mainly entrepreneurs and investors in technology, finance, manufacturing and other fields". This is highly consistent with the profile of global space tourists: the first batch of payers for space travel are almost all from industries that have natural affinity for technological innovation.

Another clue comes from the moves of domestic commercial aerospace companies. The suborbital flight ticket of Chuanyuezhe No.1 is priced at 3 million yuan, and the first batch of passengers includes academicians, entrepreneurs and actors, with actor Huang Jingyu joining in as "No.009". This path is completely different from that of Virgin Galactic: the latter sells "the sense of ritual at the American spaceport", while the former sells "the sense of participation of domestic spacecraft". The price gap between 5.1 million yuan and 3 million yuan reflects not only the product difference, but also the difference between two kinds of narrative logic.

Hidden worries from Virgin Galactic: Selling tickets is easy, but taking off is hard

Putting aside the question of "who is buying", a more noteworthy fact is that Virgin Galactic does not have the capacity for continuous commercial flights at present.

The previous-generation spacecraft VSS Unity was retired after completing its last commercial flight in June 2024. The new-generation Delta-class spacecraft was originally scheduled to resume commercial flights at the end of 2026, but the latest timeline has been postponed to February 2027, and the second Delta spacecraft is expected to arrive at the spaceport in March 2027. Virgin Galactic expects to achieve at least 10 flights per month by the end of the second quarter of 2027, and realize positive quarterly cash flow in that quarter.

As of press time, Virgin Galactic's stock price is 3.02 US dollars, with a market value of about 458 million US dollars, which has shrunk by more than 80% compared with its peak after listing.

This means that what Virgin Galactic is selling online now is "futures". The delivery time is uncertain, the spacecraft is not yet ready, and the company is still making losses. But Virgin Galactic's ticket selling pace has not slowed down: the 750,000 US dollar batch launched in March 2026 was originally planned to have 50 tickets, but it was "over-subscribed due to strong demand", with the total reservation amount exceeding 50 million US dollars. The company plans to "open a new round of ticket selling at a higher price later this year".

If we only look at the financial data and operating status, Virgin Galactic's space tourism business is full of uncertainties. But the consumption logic of buyers has never been related to cost performance.

The core value of space flight lies in its irreplaceability: up to now, only a very small number of people in human history have entered space. Prichard of Virgin Galactic put it plainly:

"Because so few people have actually been there, there is not even a language or culture to describe what it is like."

What you get for 5.1 million yuan is not just a 90-minute weightlessness experience, but an identity. The identity of "I am an early participant in human space exploration". The first 4 days of "learning how to leave the earth" is essentially the construction of a sense of ritual - training, badges, customized spacesuits, pins of the Society of Space Explorers, the symbolic significance of these items far exceeds their physical value.

The judgment of Eric Zhu, an analyst from Bloomberg Intelligence, is very representative: "The fundamental problem of the industry is scalability and cost. It targets a very narrow segment of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, but even this group will not generate repeat consumption."

In other words, space tourism is a business that "everyone buys only once". Virgin Galactic needs to constantly find new "first-time buyers", and the Chinese market is the next untapped market that it has not yet fully explored.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Financial Gossip Girl Channel" (ID: baguanvpindao), author: Jian Shan, authorized for release by 36Kr.