2027: A space holiday
Kubrick film could become reality in a floating hotel with room for 400 guests
FOR tourists who have been everywhere and seen everything, it could be the ultimate new destination.
The first ‘space hotel’ – featuring restaurants, a cinema, a spa and room for 400 guests – could take its first reservations as early as 2027, if plans unveiled yesterday get off the ground.
Construction work on the Voyager Station could begin in four years, with robots building the 650ft wide rotating wheelshaped structure in low Earth orbit.
Highlights of a stay might include taking a space walk 1,200 miles above the planet, and the fact that the hotel would complete an orbit of the Earth every 90 minutes, allowing guests to see the sun rise 16 times a day.
The idea of a space hotel was made famous by the floating Hilton in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The company behind the reallife version is the Orbital Assembly Corporation, a California business founded in 2018 which hopes to transform construction in space.
No details of the cost of creating the space station, or that of spending a night in the hotel, have been revealed but a clue might comes from Nasa’s plans to let tourists take a break on the International Space Station – for nearly £50million a trip.
Transporter rockets carrying passengers and cargo will dock at the hotel at an inner docking ring. Outside this will be a habitation ring which will include rooms for guests, a gym, kitchen and bar, restaurants and crew quarters.
As the wheel spins it will create an artificial gravity similar to that of the moon, which is a sixth that of Earth. A person weighing 10st on Earth would feel like just over 23lb on the hotel. The ride could get a little bumpy over the North Pole after scientists discovered the existence of ‘space hurricanes’.
But should the unthinkable happen, the wheel will have 44 escape pods, known as ‘emergency return vehicles’, programmed for automatic flight back to Earth.