Voyage 07 · departs 18 March 2027
Meridian
The house’s standard voyage and the one most guests fly first: the station’s own orbit, five days of it.
- Days in orbit
- 5
- Altitude
- 408 km
- Inclination
- 51.6°
- Seats
- 1 / 4
The ground track: one orbit, drawn on a flat map of the Earth.
What that plan means
You will go round 77 times, once every 92.6 minutes, and see 77 sunrises. The voyage covers 3,312,606 kilometres at 7.67 kilometres a second, and at no point will it feel like moving.
High enough that the view reaches 72° of latitude: on the night passes the auroral ovals rise over the poleward horizon, green at a hundred kilometres and red above.
$4.8 million per seat, all preparation included
Meridian flies the most travelled orbit there is. At 51.6 degrees the ground track swings from the latitude of London to the latitude of the Falklands and back every ninety-two minutes, which means that in five days you will pass over almost every inhabited place on Earth — most of them several times, in daylight and in darkness.
The first day is for adjusting. Nobody sleeps well on the first night without weight, and the commander will keep the shutters closed for the first few hours while the cabin settles. From the second day the flight plan is yours: the dome is open whenever you want it to be, and the flight director on the ground will tell you what is coming up over the horizon.
What guests remember
The speed of the terminator. The way the Himalaya throw shadows fifty kilometres long in the last minute of the day. The green line of the aurora lying across the southern horizon when the track dips toward Antarctica. And the silence of the night side, when the cabin lights are off and the only light is coming up through the glass.
