Question: have you ever been to space?

Sam Connolly answered on 17 Jun 2014:

No, unfortunately not 🙁 I wish I had been! I’m hoping I’ll be able to at some point in my life! At the moment it’s very expensive to go to space (it costs millions and millions of pounds per person), so only a few people get to go – only about 550 people have ever been, since people first went to space about fifty years ago! That’s only about one 5 hundred million people, or about two per country!

It is hopefully going to get cheaper soon though – in the past, all the rockets were built by governments, but now there are companies that are starting to do it on their own, which should make going to space cheaper. You can already reserve tickets with Virgin Galactic to go to the edge of space, but it still costs a few hundred thousand pounds! (http://www.virgingalactic.com/). I think the most exciting things are being done by companies called Spacex and Reaction Engines, who are both trying to make going to space easier and cheaper. You can see a cool video of Spacex’s newest lander here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_-g3UWQ04 and Reaction Engines’ Skylon spaceship here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bkjiGGy0gc