By HAL WILLIAMS
A BV REPORT on space tourism seemed like a glimpse of a more distant future when it was published in Summer, 2018, but things have moved on apace in the intervening years.
Plans are now afoot to launch a tourist-friendly space station and hotel – able to welcome 400 guests – in 2027.
The Voyager Class space station will be operated by the Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC), the world’s first large-scale space construction firm. Work is expected to begin in 2025. That allows just two years for the project to be built, launched, and open for business.
Call us sceptics, but that sounds like a tight deadline.
The floating hotel will feature bedrooms, bars, restaurants and a gym as well as (presumably less plush) lodgings and equipment for gravity research personnel from national space agencies.
“The station will be designed from the start to accommodate both national space agencies conducting low gravity research and space tourists who want to experience life on a large space station with the comfort of low gravity and the feel of a nice hotel,” says the OAC website.
The space station will be constructed of two concentric rings, the inner a docking hub, and the outer the backbone of the station, with mountings for “habitable modules, solar panels, radiators, and a rail transport system”.
Pods attached to the outer ring are expected to be sub-let or sold to Nasa for research and training trips, and provide tourist accommodation.
No word, as yet, on pricing for space tourists.
