We're less than three years away from the first space hotel with bars and cinema opening its doors
Are you excited for the prospect of technological advancements which could see you travel in space on your next vacation?
Well, it might be a lot sooner than you thought.
The Gateway Foundation recently announced that will be the first company to launch a hotel in space, which is called the Voyager Station.
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With hopes of completing the project in 2027, it’s said to be a 50,000-square-metre facility that will be built by Orbital Assembly Corporation.
The company describes itself as ‘the world's first large scale space construction company’ - which is pretty cool.
The organisations plan to begin working on it in 2026, and visitors will be able to visit the following year - just in cause you couldn't wait.
Holding up to 440 people, the rotating hotel expects to give the station gravity equivalent to one-sixth of the Earth's.
At the time of its initial plans in 2019, senior design architect Tim Alatorre told Dezeen: "Eventually, going to space will just be another option people will pick for their vacation, just like going on a cruise, or going to Disney World.
"Because the overall costs are still so high most people assume that space tourism will only be available to the super-rich, and while I think this will be true for the next several years, the Gateway Foundation has a goal of making space travel open to everyone."
The first thing the company will start building is its central un-pressurised ring structure with the docking hub at its centre before moving on to a 200-metre-diametre outer ring truss, which will be connected to a network.
With 24 habitation modules on board that will contain living quarters, restaurants, gyms, bars, accommodation for the crew and even scientific research pods, it’s going to be a big ship.
According to the organisation, the space hotel will have the ‘feel of a luxury hotel’, and it’s going to be full of neutral colours - not to dissimilar from a regular hotel on our little blue planet.
Alatorre said: "In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's Space Station 5 is a sterile, white, museum-like hotel.
"While it made for a clearly futuristic feeling in the movie, in reality, it wasn't a very inviting space. As humans, we innately connect to natural materials and colours."
If luxury is what it’s after, it’s sure heading in the right direction as it’ll also feature 500-square-metre ‘luxury villas’ where you can actually rented to live in permanently.
Not only will they have enough room to house 16 people, but they also have three bathrooms and a massive kitchen.
According to the Gateway Foundation, their experience ‘will rival the best venues on Earth’ and will get to see a water feature that ‘will seemingly defy the laws of physics’.
Alatorre added: "We are planning on full-service kitchens with all of the dishes you would expect on a luxury cruise ship or in a major hotel.
"A lot of the logistical issues for food service have been worked out years ago by the cruise ship industry."
And in a 2022 interview with CNN, he said they were 'doing everything we can to make space accessible to everyone', not just billionaires.
Okay, I’m sold.
Topics: Space, Technology, Travel
Britt Jones