Hold onto your helmets because the world’s first space hotel is set to open in 2027.
In 2019, the Gateway Foundation released plans for a cruise ship-style hotel that would float above the Earth’s atmosphere.
At the time, the project was called Von Braun Station, and it would comprise of 24 modules that are connected by elevator shafts that make up a rotating wheel simulating gravity towards the outer edges.
However, since then, the futuristic hotel has been renamed Voyager Station and is being built by Orbital Assembly Corporation, a construction company focused on gravity-enabled structures, who plans on unveiling it in the next few years, despite Covid-19 delays.
Senior design architect at the Gateway Foundation Tim Alatorre said of the design to CNN: “The station rotates, pushing the contents of the station out to the perimeter of the station, much in the way that you can spin a bucket of water — the water pushes out into the bucket and stays in place.”
Alatorre also said in a separate CNN interview that the company wasn’t looking to Stanley Kurbrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for inspiration.
Instead, they want to bring a slice of Earth to outer space.
“I think the goal of Stanley Kubrick was to highlight the divide between technology and humanity and so, purposefully, he made the stations and the ships very sterile and clean and alien.”
He also added: “We’re going to have a number of different recreation activities and games that’ll highlight the fact that you’re able to do things that you can’t do on Earth,” he said.
“Because of the weightlessness and the reduced gravity, you’ll be able to jump higher, be able to lift things, be able to run in ways that you can’t on Earth.”
The company’s head, former pilot John Blincow also said to CNN that right now is a significant time for space travel, with the hotel being tangible in the near future.
“We’re trying to make the public realise that this golden age of space travel is just around the corner. It’s coming. It’s coming fast.”
It’s unclear how much accommodation will be, however we have a feeling it definitely won’t be budget-friendly.
The Gateway Foundation said they eventually want to make the hotel similar to ‘a trip to Disneyland.’
