Millions joined a livestream selling tickets to space on a Chinese rocket

Hong Kong CNN —

Two tickets for passage on what could be the first Chinese rocket ship to take tourists to space were sold Thursday, according to a livestream held by the company, as the country’s commercial space firms aim to join a small but expanding global space tourism industry.

The tickets – priced at 1,000,000 yuan (around $140,000) for a roughly 12-minute trip to the edge of space on a spacecraft set to be launched by Deep Blue Aerospace in 2027 – sold out “immediately,” according to state-linked Global Times.

Some 3 million people tuned in to the broadcast on Chinese shopping platform Taobao, which was the first time a Chinese firm has put tickets for space tourism up for public sale.

The identities of the ticket buyers were not made available.

Deep Blue Aerospace is among a vanguard of Chinese commercial space firms developing rockets to power Beijing’s ambitious plans for outer space, which include building out satellite constellations to rival American firm SpaceX’s Starlink – as China vies to become a dominant space power alongside the United States.

Work remains to be done for the company to meet its announced timeline.

Deep Blue Aerospace’s reusable Nebula-1 rocket – slated to carry the company’s CEO and five others to space for the mission in three years – is still under development.

Last month, the rocket failed to complete a high-altitude vertical recovery test flight, the company said, with footage it released showing the vehicle crashing in its final phase. A new test is slated for next month, while the company has said it will ramp up testing in 2025 and 2026 to ensure the “safety and reliability of suborbital manned travel.”

Companies working in rocket development across the world have