There could be different things to do in space, so offerings differ. SpaceX offers you the "orbital" space - you can put your payload on orbit and it's going to sit there for a long time, while doing research, serving communications, observing Earth - or even leave for another planet altogether. Virgin Galactic hopes to offer you the "suborbital" space - a short (ten minutes or so) rides to heights of about 100 km, with some 4 minutes of weightlessness included - for a lot smaller price than SpaceX.
So, you can have different accesses to space. Space have different places (and, in case of suborbital flight, speeds) - and the costs to get there are different.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 18.9 ms ] threadThere could be different things to do in space, so offerings differ. SpaceX offers you the "orbital" space - you can put your payload on orbit and it's going to sit there for a long time, while doing research, serving communications, observing Earth - or even leave for another planet altogether. Virgin Galactic hopes to offer you the "suborbital" space - a short (ten minutes or so) rides to heights of about 100 km, with some 4 minutes of weightlessness included - for a lot smaller price than SpaceX.
So, you can have different accesses to space. Space have different places (and, in case of suborbital flight, speeds) - and the costs to get there are different.