You can now reserve a stay in an upcoming "luxury space hotel" for a "fully refundable" $80,000 deposit:
Well-heeled will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition. That startup, called Orion Span, aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022. "We are launching the first-ever affordable luxury space hotel," said Orion Span founder and CEO Frank Bunger, who unveiled the Aurora Station idea today (April 5) at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California.
"Affordable" is a relative term: A 12-day stay aboard Aurora Station will start at $9.5 million. Still, that's quite a bit less than orbital tourists have paid in the past. From 2001 through 2009, seven private citizens took a total of eight trips to the (ISS), paying an estimated $20 million to $40 million each time. (These private missions were brokered by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures and employed Russian Soyuz spacecraft and rockets.)
[...] Orion Span is building Aurora Station itself, Bunger added. The company — some of whose key engineering players have helped design and operate the ISS — is manufacturing the hotel in Houston and developing the software required to run it in the Bay Area, he said.
Aurora Station will orbit at an altitude of 200 miles (~322 km). The pressurized volume of the entire station is planned to be 160 cubic meters initially, compared to 916 m3 for the International Space Station, 330 m3 for a Bigelow B330 inflatable module, and 2,250 m3 for Bigelow's BA 2100 concept module. However, the company plans to expand Aurora Station with additional modules in the future, and may lease them out for long-term residents.
Also at the Orlando Sentinel and Space News.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @12:04AM
Uncle Sam says "No!"
Land of the free.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday April 07 2018, @12:39AM (5 children)
Why is it so low, if they don't even know yet how you get there? 200 miles requires frequent altitude boosts.
Target market is billionaires who don't suffer from claustrophobia. This thing is tiny.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:14AM
If they have vehicles visiting it regularly, it shouldn't be hard to boost its orbit. ISS orbits as low as 205 miles.
It seems claustrophobia-inducing compared to the ISS. The way to solve that is with inflatable modules from Bigelow. They do plan to add more modules, so I think they will go for that option eventually.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:28AM (3 children)
Star Trek predicted it. Soon the Bezos and the Zuckerbergs and the Crawfords will live in the cloud and shit on the surface poors below.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:48AM (2 children)
Better space than the clouds, since shit will burn up upon re-entry, instead of freeze and kill you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:52AM (1 child)
Bezos will package his shit and sell it to you at Whole Foods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:00AM
Amazon Whole Foods switched the in-store condiments to Sir Kensington's deluxe gourmet organic vegan ketchup, mayo, and mustard to hide the taste of shit in store-brand prepared foods.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:55AM (4 children)
The rich Americans will just go up and say "Why can't I have a Waldorf salad" and shit like that.
Send me: I'd fucking appreciate the WHOLE experience. I have to shit in a bag? Gimme two so I can have a souvenir, man!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:56AM (3 children)
Aw, stupid auto correct ruined the whole joke
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:32AM (2 children)
If a flipped bit can ruin your day, you're not ready for cosmic rays.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @04:50AM (1 child)
Modded -1 Troll, really? The Space Age is dead. Truly this is the Social Media Age, where moderators sit on their stupid ignorant assholes safe inside the protective ozone layer and safe inside the magnetosphere from the harmful effects of hard radiation from the solar wind and cosmic rays.
HEY STUPID MODS: IT'S NOT SAFE IN OUTER SPACE. RADIATION CAN FUCK UP YOUR SHIT. THAT'S A GODDAMNED FACT. NEVER LEAVE YOUR SAFE SPACE ON EARTH, YOU FUCKING MORONS. FUCK YOU.
(Score: 5, Touché) by aristarchus on Saturday April 07 2018, @05:30AM
Modded Troll for complaining about being modded troll? Truly the Space Age is Dead! Deader than the doornail you rode in on! As dead as the guest of honor at an Irish wake! Deader than a brown dwarf star after it found out what its companion Red Giant had been up to, by standing on a box, and looking through the trailer window, using dark matter, of course, and then having the box you were standing on collapse due to excess gravity (again, dark matter), and then almost but not quite being choked to death, which I am lead to believe makes one into a brown dwarf, unable to sustain fusion, and stuff.
Life as an AC is hard, AC! Many have tried it, and failed. You need to be made of sterner stuff, so you can sustain the many, many troll mods that are headed your way. Remember, in Space, no one can hear you scream, because, you know, there is no air, and with a conveying medium, sound waves do not propogate, so if if Troll mod you in your space suit, when your coms have been mysteriously disrupted, no one will ever know. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Saturday April 07 2018, @07:54AM (1 child)
I would love to get the job of folding towels and cooking meals on that thing.
But I suspect the crew members will either be charged a discounted rate for the opportunity to live and work up there (founder talks a lot about barter) or the clients will have the opportunity to pick and choose their ‘staff’ from a catalog.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday April 07 2018, @11:12AM
Space slavery [tourismconcern.org.uk]!
Or just robutts.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 07 2018, @05:05PM (1 child)
Roald Dahl's follow-up to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory included a visit to a Space Hotel run by the USA. Unfortunately, it's been taken over by Vermicious Knids, a shapeshifting and incredibly strong alien race.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday April 07 2018, @08:07PM
The best part is when they spell out SCRAM with their bodies.
You're a vicious mass of alien muscle that fills an elevator. That's
message enough.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.