Yes, and the first suborbital crewed flight was in May 1961. A bit more than sixty years ago.

The gap between the Wright Brothers' first flight and Apollo 11 was about 66 years. (I realize aircraft and spacecraft are not very similar).

I think almost everyone interested in space flight back then would be pretty disappointed by the slow pace of development since Apollo, until things picked up recently.

And even then we still don't have "paying passengers" in the sense of being able to rock up and buy ticket. One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count.

I also suspect the pool of people willing to pony up $250k+ for a few minutes barely in space is going to be pretty shallow. I'd sign up in a heartbeat for a space hotel trip in that price range though, so here's hoping Axiom Space delivers (and gets the price range below the current projection of tens of millions).

> One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count.

The person who won that seat didn't actually end up going on the first flight (will go on a later one). Some 18 year old with a dad who runs a hedge fund went. How much he paid was not disclosed.

Note that SpaceX hadn't even launched its first rocket in 2004. They didn't reach orbit until 2008 and yet sent crew to the space station over a year ago already.

Yes. What made it take this long?

Virgin Galactic had an accident the killed its test pilot a few years back. Had to build new spaceshiptwo