Startup company span Orion announced on Thursday at a summit in space 2.0 in San Jose, California, that it would be launching “the first ever space hotel an affordable luxury” to the end of 2021.
If plans go well, officials expect to start to receive guests at the station Aurora until 2022. Interested travelers can book a room for $80,000, but take note that these five numbers only a small advance for a 12-day stay, which carries a total price tag of 9.5 million dollars.
“There’s been innovation around the architecture to make it more modular and more easy to use and have a high level of automation, so we must have [extravehicular activity] or space walks,” Frank Bangera, founder and CEO of Orion span, said Space.com. “Our goal when we started the company to create that innovation on the simplicity of features and ease perhaps we’re a tremendous value.”
Although 9.5 million dollars seem huge, it is much less than previously reported figures range from $20 to $40 million in the head.
Richard Garriott, a video game Developer, which reportedly shelled out for a two-week stay on the ISS in 2008, $30 million, told NBC news that the initiative period of Orion is critical for “research and private use”.
“Seeing the Earth from orbit is a deep life experience,” Garriott told the publication. “You feel not only distant, but at the same time strangely close close… you feel a deep connection with the future of our fragile planet than ever before.”
According to the company, station “Aurora” will measure 43.5 feet wide by 14.1 feet and have a pressurized volume in 5650 cubic feet. The hotel is located in orbit at an altitude of 200 miles that is 50 miles closer to Earth than the international Space station.
In total it can accommodate four people and two crew, who are likely to be former astronauts.
But the station will not remain the same size forever, Bangera. Over time the hotel will be to install additional modules to meet that growing demand, the company plans.
“Our long-term goal is to sell the actual to these new modules,” said Bangera website. “We call it ‘space Condo’. So, either for life or sublease, this vision of the future is here — to create long-term, sustainable human habitation in [low earth orbit].”
The hotel is currently being built in Houston, and his software is being developed in the Bay area of San Francisco.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
