Work on the world’s first low-orbit “space hotel” will begin in 2025 and come equipped with restaurants, a cinema, a spa and rooms for 400 people.
Developed by the Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC), the Voyager station could be operational as early as 2027, with infrastructure built in orbit around the Earth.
The space station will be a large circle and will rotate to generate artificial gravity that will be set at a level similar to the gravity found on the surface of the Moon.
The Voyager Station hotel will include many of the features you would expect from a cruise, including themed restaurants, a spa and a cinema.
It will include a series of pods connected to the outside of the rotating ring and some of these pods could be sold to NASA and ESA for space research.
No details have been revealed about the cost of building the space station or the cost of spending a night at the hotel, although the OAC says construction costs are getting cheaper thanks to launch vehicles. reusable like the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the future Starship.
Developed by the Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC), the Voyager station could be operational as early as 2027, with infrastructure built in orbit around the Earth.
The space station will be a large circle and rotate to generate artificial gravity that will be set at a level similar to the gravity found on the surface of the Moon.
The Voyager Station Hotel will include many of the features you would expect from a cruise, including themed restaurants, a spa and a cinema.
The Voyager class space station will consist of a series of rings, with a series of “modules” connected to the outside of the rings.
Some of these 24 modules will be managed by the Gateway Foundation and will be used for crew, air, water and electricity offices.
They will also include a gym, kitchen, restaurant, bar and other essential facilities for people who will be at the station for the long term.
The rest of the modules will be rented or sold to private companies and governments.
For example, people could buy one of the 20×12 meter modules for a private villa or several modules to create a hotel with spa, cinema and more.
Government agencies could use the station to house their own science module or as a training center for astronauts preparing to go to Mars.
The idea of an orbiting space station built around a central, circular wheel dates back to the early days of space travel, in an idea by Wernher von Braun.
He was one of the architects of NASA’s Apollo program and in the 1950s proposed a spinning wheel-shaped habitat to create artificial gravity.
The concept of the Voyager station, which is a similar idea but on a much larger scale, first emerged in 2012 with the launch of the Gateway Foundation.
OAC, the company created by the foundation to make the vision of a station in orbit, was created in 2018 with the goal of being operational in 2027.
It will include a series of pods connected to the outside of the rotating ring and some of these pods could be sold to NASA and ESA for space research.
Some of these 24 modules will be managed by the Gateway Foundation and will be used for crew, air, water and electricity offices.
If fully realized, it will be the largest human object created ever placed in space.
Although the cost of developing and building the space station has not been revealed, with the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and, in the future, the SpaceX spacecraft, it has become more feasible to place large objects. in orbit.
The average cost of launching material into space has been about $ 8,000 per kg for a long time, but the reusable nature of the Falcon 9 reduced that to $ 2,000 / kg and SpaceX predicts that Starship will take it to a few hundred dollars.
The spacecraft and other future fully reusable spacecraft will make the station viable, as it will allow regular, fast connections between Earth and Voyager.
The team includes veterans, pilots, engineers and NASA architects, who build a system that includes multiple pods for different purposes and a high-speed “space train”.
Each of these 24 integrated housing modules will be 20 meters long by 12 meters wide and will have a different function: from hotel rooms to cinemas.
The firm also expects its ring to include meeting rooms, concert halls, bars, libraries, gyms and a spa, everything you’d see on a cruise, but this one will travel around the world every 90 minutes.
First, the team plans to test the concept with a much smaller-scale prototype station and a free-flying microgravity installation similar to the International Space Station.
“This will be the next industrial revolution,” explained John Blincow, founder of the Gateway Foundation, adding that it will create a new space industry.
Rotation is “vital,” Blincow says, because it’s not feasible to have people on a gravity-free space station for long periods of time, and people may want to be in space for months, especially when working in a hotel. .
“People need gravity so their bodies don’t fall apart,” Blincow said, adding that the station can help understand how much gravity our bodies need, as it will be able to increase or decrease speed. of rotation to obtain a higher or lower gravity.
Although the cost of developing and building the space station has not been revealed, with the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the future of the SpaceX spacecraft, it has become more feasible to put large objects into orbit.
The firm also expects its ring to include meeting rooms, concert halls, bars, libraries, gyms and a spa, everything you’d see on a cruise, but this one will travel around the world every 90 minutes.
Rotation is “vital,” Blincow says, because it’s not feasible to have people on a gravity-free space station for long periods of time, and people may want to be in space for months, especially when working in a hotel. .
When the tests are completed, a robot called STAR (Structure Truss Assembly Robot) will build the framework for Voyager in orbi.
The first space construction will be a 61-meter gravity ring prototype in low Earth orbit that can rotate to create gravity at the level of Mars, 40% of Earth’s gravity.
This will take about two years to build and has been called a “short-term protest”; when the space, put it together, will take three days.
Although the hotel is the initial target of the artificial gravity space station, the company hopes to cede space for pods to agencies such as NASA and ESA in the future.