During a clear night looking at the stars every child has dreamt of flying up and take a stroll in the space. What if this dream could be reality? Well, in 2027 it will be!
The lucky guests of the first space hotel will be able to take a trip – literally – out of this world. It will be called Voyager Station and will be built by Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC), which describes itself as “the first large-scale space construction company”. If all goes according to plan, it will start being built in 2025 and be ready in 2027.
It will be a rotating space station in the shape of a Ferris wheel that will be positioned in low Earth orbit, between 300 and 1000 km altitude, designed to produce varying levels of artificial gravity (by increasing or decreasing the speed of rotation) and thus ensure that guests can keep their feet on the ground and not have to give up any comforts.
Voyager’s living spaces will be spacious and designed for demanding travellers: they will be located in 24 modules between the two rings of the ‘wheel’. First and foremost, they will include luxury villas that can be rented for a week, a month, or bought. They will be 500 square metre villas with three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a total of 16 beds. For those travelling alone or in pairs, there will be 30 square metre suites with private bathrooms. And there will be plenty of other spaces to pass the time.
There will be a gym, a restaurant and a bar where you can try out space dehydrated food as well as fresh one, delivered twice a week. All this will be done by means of spacecraft that will dock in a sort of port positioned in the centre of the wheels from which passengers will also enter on board the new space launchers, such as Virgin Galactic’s ShapeShipTwo or Elon Musk’s Space X CrewDragon.
The cost of a stay? OAC does not reveal it, and for now merely says ‘that they are not as exorbitant as one might expect’. In the meantime, on the website – voyagerstation.com – you can book a place, or invest in the hotel.
So, will you be one of the future space travellers?
By Federico Hillebrand
