It has cost anywhere from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars for women to go to space, depending on whether we’re talking about professional astronauts on government missions or private passengers on short tourist flights.

First women in space: government astronauts

For early women astronauts and cosmonauts (like Valentina Tereshkova or NASA astronauts), there was no “ticket price” at all—governments funded the missions.

  • National space agencies (NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, etc.) pay the launch, spacecraft, training, and salary costs from public budgets, not from the astronauts’ pockets.
  • A single crewed launch today can easily cost a few hundred million dollars; the per-seat cost has often been estimated around tens of millions of dollars, but it’s not itemized “per woman” or “per man.”

So for women who are career astronauts, you can think of the cost as “multi‑million‑dollar mission funded by a space agency,” not a personal bill.

Women paying their own way: space tourism

When people ask “how much did it cost for the women to go to space,” they often mean women who bought tickets on private or tourist flights.

Suborbital tourist flights (a few minutes in space)

Some recent high‑profile all‑female or female‑led trips have been suborbital: straight up, a few minutes of weightlessness, then back down.

  • A famous all‑female Blue Origin flight in 2025 (including Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez) was an 11‑minute trip on New Shepard. The exact seat price for those women has not been disclosed, but we know:
    • Blue Origin requires a 150,000 USD deposit for a seat request.
* The first Blue Origin auctioned seat (for a different flight) sold for **28 million USD**.
  • Analysts and industry watchers often estimate that “normal” seats on such suborbital flights land somewhere in the millions of dollars per person , even if auction prices are outliers.

In other words, even for an 11‑minute space hop, the women aboard were likely in the “multi‑million‑dollar per seat” range, or had their seats paid/comped via sponsorships and promotion.

Orbital tourism: days in space for tens of millions

Going all the way to orbit (e.g., visiting the International Space Station) costs far more than a quick up‑and‑down flight, regardless of gender.

  • Axiom Space–organized private trips to the ISS have been priced around 55 million USD per person for about a week in orbit.
  • Earlier space tourists (men and women) who bought rides on Russian Soyuz missions also paid in the tens of millions of dollars per seat.

Women who go as paying orbital tourists are in essentially the same price bracket as men: roughly 50–60 million dollars each, depending on contract and mission details.

Special case: women making missions cheaper

There is also a scientific and economic angle: studies suggest all‑female astronaut crews could actually reduce mission costs on long journeys, like a Mars trip.

  • An ESA‑related study simulated a 1,080‑day Mars mission and found a four‑woman crew would need 3,736 pounds (about 1,695 kg) less food than an all‑male crew.
  • Because getting payload to orbit is extremely expensive (one estimate used 93,400 USD per kilogram to the ISS), that reduced food mass translates to about 158 million USD in savings over the mission.

That doesn’t mean women are “cheap seats,” but it shows how biological and size differences can have very real cost effects on mission design.

Simple breakdown answer

If you want a quick, headline‑style takeaway for “how much did it cost for the women to go to space” in today’s terms:

  • Government astronaut missions with women aboard:
    • Mission budgets: typically hundreds of millions of dollars total, but no personal ticket; it’s all agency‑funded.
  • Suborbital tourist seats (like Blue Origin’s all‑female 11‑minute flight):
    • Deposit: at least 150,000 USD ; realistic full seat cost likely in the millions per woman.
  • Orbital tourist seats (multi‑day stays near or on the ISS):
    • Around 55 million USD per woman on recent commercial flights.

So the real answer depends on which women and which kind of spaceflight you mean—but in every modern tourist case, the price tag is life‑changingly huge.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.