Most technology gets cheaper over time, but commercial spaceflight has gone the other way. In 1984 a corporation paid $40,000 to send an employee to orbit on the space shuttle; today a private ride to the International Space Station is estimated at around $50 million plus $35,000 a day for room and board. This episode maps how space tourism evolved from government-only programs into a privatized industry and what that shift means for the rest of us on Earth.

We start with the Soviet Intercosmos program and NASA's payload specialists, the Teacher in Space and Journalist in Space initiatives cut short by the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and cash-strapped Russia selling seats on Mir and Soyuz. We follow Dennis Tito's 2001 flight, the Ansari X Prize and SpaceShipOne, the rival approaches of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, the 2014 VSS En ...