Kuangchi plans to invest US$1.5 billion in stratospheric balloon tourism

KuangChi Science, a Shenzhen-based future science company, plans to invest 10 billion yuan ($ 1.5 billion) in a project in Hangzhou that allows ordinary people to experience life in the future and near-outer space flight simulations.

Liu Ruopeng, president of KuangChi, said that people will be able to experience what it feels like to live in a futuristic room where furniture can move, think and reconfigure themselves in Future Valley.

Visitors to the Valley can also log into a simulation aircraft of a deep space tour that offers the experience of flying up to 21 kilometers above the ground, which is just beyond the border of outer space.

The Kuang-Chi GCI Fund & Incubator, a global incubator mechanism initiated by Kuang-Chi, was established in Tel Aviv. The first phase of $ 50 million has just been invested into projects that aim to change the future of Man’s way of life.

Kuang-Chi Group set up a subsidiary of KuangChi Science in 2014, which went public in Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August 2014. Around 3,000 scientists from more than 40 countries will congregate in the Valley to conduct research. The Valley is expected to open by the end of next year.

Here is the KuangChi Science website

World View is an Arizona based company that has been trying to create stratospheric balloon tourism.

World View should open a new $15 million space balloon design, manufacture, and integration and launch facility later this year, which will be co-located with Spaceport Tucson.

And they expect to fly the first customer payloads by year’s end.

Three areas are certain to be included in World View’s stratollite business plan.

They include:

— Communications – To aid first responders in their efforts to locate and assist those in distress. To build constellations of stratollites that affordably deliver cellular device signals to Third World populations. And rapidly deployment of communications systems for troops in the field.

— Remote sensing – For real-time, continuous visual data for agricultural monitoring for farmers or even commodities traders. For the study of city traffic patterns. And for advertisers looking to better target brick–and–mortar customers by literally studying their traffic into niche geographic markets.

— Weather – For the collection of critical, in-situ weather data over remote parts of the ocean where weather systems often develop and conventional observational systems are lacking.

SOURCES – China Daily, Kuangchi science, World View, Forbes