A private space company in Houston, Texas, is planning to build a luxury hotel, which will orbit 200 miles above earth.
The Aurora Station, described as the ‘first luxury hotel in space’, is pencilled in for launch in 2021, opening up to guests a year later.
There’s room for six guests (including two crew members), at a cost of $792,000 (around £560,000) per night with an $80,000 deposit required to reserve a spot.
For the full 12-day trip, which will include the viewing of 384 sunrises and sunsets from the 35 x 14-foot module, you’re looking at a cool $9.5 million.
“We want to get people into space because it’s the final frontier for our civilization,” said Orion Span CEO Frank Bunger, who says the experience is geared towards wannabe astronauts with money to burn, rather than sightseers.
He added: “We’re not selling a hey-let’s-go-to-the-beach equivalent in space. We’re selling the experience of being an astronaut. You reckon that there are people who are willing to pay to have that experience.”
Orion Span says it hasn’t yet secured a contract with a launch provider, like SpaceX, so its launch timeline may be a little ambitious.
However, it claims to have “developed proprietary technology to drive a full order of magnitude of cost out of the design and manufacture of a space station.”
This is one to keep an eye on, but a luxury space hotel orbiting the world in just four years time? It seems ambitious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
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