Good news everyone! While the pandemic has canceled most of our travel plans, soon we will be able to vacation in the stars with the galaxy’s first-ever space hotel. The Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) announced plans to begin building the hotel, named Voyager Station, in low Earth orbit in 2025, with an eye towards opening for business in 2027.
Artwork of the Voyager Station features individual pods attached to a rotating wheel, with tubes connecting the different areas forming an X. It looks like a cross between the International Space Station and the London Eye observation wheel. The 400-person luxury resort will feature several onboard amenities, including restaurants, a spa, a cinema, gyms, libraries, concert venues, Earth-viewing lounges and bars, as well as crew quarters, air, water, and power will also take up a portion of the space facility. The Voyager Station is set to circle the globe every 90 minutes, with a rotation that will generate artificial gravity that resembles the gravity on the surface of the moon.
The OAC has not released a public budget for the cost of the hotel, but they are currently looking for investors, like government agencies that could use the hotel for research purposes or as a training center for astronauts. “This will be the next industrial revolution,” said John Blincow, the founder of Gateway Foundation, which is working with the OAC to launch the hotel.
But don’t start packing that space luggage just yet: Voyager Station is still looking for investors, and if/when it does launch, it will likely be prohibitively expensive for 99 percent of the world. Also, the timeline to build this behemoth seems way too fast. There’s a La Quinta in my area that has been under construction for nearly a decade, so I’m not holding out hope for a pop-up space hotel anytime soon.
Twitter was quick to dunk on the space hotel, citing its privileged customer base and the myriad of problems that kind of money could solve on Earth:
the irony of a hotel in space only being able to have a max rating of 5 stars https://t.co/uZaq1w8uDL
— MattWillPost (@MattPostSaysHi) March 2, 2021
Hotels in space but no Stimulus, no good drinking water in many places, not enough food for the hungry, etc. https://t.co/ZoDnJi5faP
— Chris Randone (@ChrisRandone) March 2, 2021
I will be the first person to contest an “erroneous” adult film charge on their hotel bill IN SPACE https://t.co/fNwcZzCC7X
— Andy Khouri (@andykhouri) March 2, 2021
me, in 2027, in the first ever space hotel pic.twitter.com/uGOF1QVZ8K https://t.co/DPFyzOinhj
— Bradley Stern (@MuuMuse) March 2, 2021
me, in 2027, in the first ever space hotel pic.twitter.com/uGOF1QVZ8K https://t.co/DPFyzOinhj
— Bradley Stern (@MuuMuse) March 2, 2021
just read a breaking news alert about a startup launching a massive space hotel by 2025 and they’ve for sure cracked the science pic.twitter.com/CfsRw9JmGk
— Nick Sinnott (@ndsinnott) March 2, 2021
Getting paid $7.25/hr to man the fondue station at the space hotel https://t.co/b5VPyXTQW2
— Will Baker (@_wlbaker) March 1, 2021
We can’t even eat in a restaurant but a space hotel? Uh… OK. https://t.co/Wt9bSRDhHT
— Spiral Staircase (@SpiralStaircas6) March 2, 2021
If you had the money, would you book a room on the Voyager Station? Let us know in the comments!
(via Daily Mail, featured image: screencap/The Gateway Foundation)
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