It's a slow ride straight up above the earth, above airplanes, and almost to outer space.  Wanna go?

The company Space Perspective is offering up the chance to fly up to the Earth's stratosphere in a giant balloon that has a pressurized cabin.  It sounds like a slow and easy ride at 12 miles per hour, and it will take about six hours.  The cost is $125,000 a seat, according to Space.com.

It's been a minute since eighth-grade science class so I had to look up what the stratosphere is, and it's the layer of the earth's atmosphere above ours.  We live in the troposphere, and that's topped by the tropopause, and then it's the stratosphere capped by the stratopause.  The stratosphere contains the ozone layer, so we would get to see that up close.

About the balloon ride to the stratosphere, Space.com says it's "not technically outer space, but high enough to see the curvature of the Earth and the darkness of space stretching out beyond."

The flights will launch from Florida at first, but Alaska and Hawaii are possibilities down the road.  CBS News says the first test flights are supposed to take off next year, and it might be three years before any passengers are taken along, so we have plenty of time to plan.

Rockets are great and all, but this sounds like a much calmer way to get close to outer space.  The capsule can accommodate a pilot and eight passengers, and it's got a bar, a bathroom, and huge windows to see the earth against black space for the first time ever.

It sounds amazing.  And expensive.  But we have three years to save up.

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