First-Ever Luxury Space Hotel Launches In 2021, Here’s How To Book A Room (You’ll Need A Lot Of $$$)



Are you bored with backpacking in Europe or find safaris in Africa blasé and looking to up the ante on your travel adventures? Well, today is your lucky day because there is a brand new hotel that is nothing like any hotel in the history of mankind. The first-ever luxury space hotel is launching in 2021 and you can book a room at the truly out-of-this-world hotel. However, you’ll need to be a multi-millionaire to afford this incredible experience.

Orion Span is a startup with the mission to “build and sustain human communities in space accessible to all.” The space tourism company plans to open a luxury hotel in space in late 2021. The space hotel is called the “Aurora Station” and will orbit 200 miles above the Earth. By 2022, Orion Span hopes to offer rooms to space travelers in the single-module commercial space station.

“Believe you were meant for a less than ordinary life? Join us aboard Aurora Station for a 12-day adventure that will change your life,” the Orion Span website reads. “Experience the thrill of zero gravity, watch the aurora borealis, grow food in space, or dive into our holodeck, for the world’s only authentic astronaut experience.”

The Aurora Station will offer “private suites for two, the most number of windows ever created for spaceflight, weightlessness, and the world’s only authentic astronaut experience.” The Aurora Station will be 43.5-feet long by 14.1-feet wide and provide a pressurized volume of 5,650 cubic feet. For comparison, the ISS is 357-feet long. The space hotel will accommodate four guests and two crewmembers. Orion Span hopes to have former astronauts as the crewmembers. The company is said to have engineers who helped develop the International Space Station designing the Aurora Station.

There are two things interested space adventurers will need before they live out their fantasies of being an astronaut. Guests must successfully pass three months of pre-flight training, which included an online certification program and in-person training at a facility in Houston. The other huge thing that potential guests will need is a lot of money. A 12-day stay aboard the Aurora Station has a starting price of $9.5 million. In the world of space travel, $9.5 million is actually cheap when you consider that seven private citizens went on journeys to the International Space Station and paid an estimated $20 million to $40 million.

“Our long-term vision is to sell actual space in those new modules,” said Orion Span founder and CEO Frank Bunger. “We’re calling that a space condo. So, either for living or subleasing, that’s the future vision here — to create a long-term, sustainable human habitation in LEO [low Earth orbit].” As demand grows, Orion Span will add more modules to accommodate more space visitors.

Orion Span is already taking refundable deposits of $80,000 for those eager to be the first space tourists. For those who have the chutzpah and the bank account to stay in the first space hotel in history, you can apply on the Orion Span website. One thing that’s for sure, people are definitely going to bang in the space hotel.

[RT]