(Yahoo!Finance) - This year's historic momentum in space tourism is expected to continue well into 2022 and beyond.
"We had thirteen human space flight missions, three private companies had milestone historic missions," said Chad Anderson, managing partner at Space Capital, a seed venture capital firm.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX all conducted missions throughout the year.
"The biggest of those was the all civilian Inspiration4 mission that launched with SpaceX," Anderson told Yahoo Finance Live. The journey went down in history as an all-civilian crew was launched into orbit.
On Tuesday, SpaceX launched a cargo capsule to the International Space Station carrying Christmas presents and supplies. The liftoff was the private space company's 100th successful launch.
SpaceX had a massive 2021. "They had 31 launches this year, nearly all of them, 94% were on flight proven rockets, boosters that had flown before," said Anderson.
"This is a really step forward in the space economy for reducing costs and providing more access," he added.
Next year, SpaceX's fully reusable vehicle Starship is expected to fly into orbit in a highly anticipated launch.
"Starship is going to be a massive, 100-tons to orbit, fully reusable system. It can do things that we've never done before at a price point that we've never done them at," said Anderson.
More than $10 billion has been invested into the overall space infrastructure through Q3 of 2021, and $25 billion across all space technologies, according data compiled by Space Capital.
"This is going to be an even bigger, more historic year for investing into the category," said Anderson.
By Ines Ferré · Markets Reporter
Ines is a markets reporter covering stocks from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
