Virgin Galactic Sometimes it's hard to believe, but the day is coming when people can tour space.

Sometimes it's hard to believe, but the day is coming when people can tour space. Virgin Galactic Holdings ( SPCE -1.43% ) is helping build the space tourism industry. Its spacecraft is designed for suborbital flights, leaving the Earth's atmosphere but not entering orbit. These flights produce a short duration of weightlessness before coming back down.

The company sells tickets for future flights at $454,000 per seat but has more test flights to complete before beginning customer flights. The company's most recent test was a successful flight in July 2021, when founder Richard Branson joined the ship's crew. The long-term potential for Virgin Galactic is a fleet expansion and mastery of the technology that can make the price to fly affordable for more customers, bringing space tourism into the mainstream. The stock's small $2.6 billion market cap leaves a lot of room for upside if Virgin Galactic is successful.