Cool! 2001 is coming...only 11 years late!
BARCELONA (Reuters) - A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.
The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.
During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.
Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, said the project will put his company (www.galacticsuite.com) at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it, and forecast space travel will become common in the future.
"It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space," he told Reuters Television.
A nascent space tourism industry is beginning to take shape with construction underway in New Mexico of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers.
British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride.
Galactic Suite Ltd, set up in 2007, hopes to start its project with a single pod in orbit 450 km (280 miles) above the earth, traveling at 30,000 km per hour, with the capacity to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots.
It will take a day and a half to reach the pod - which Claramunt compared to a mountain retreat, with no staff to greet the traveler.
"When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for 3 days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After 3 days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth," he said.
More than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel and at least 43 people have already reserved.
The numbers are similar for Virgin Galactic with 300 people already paid or signed up for the trip but unlike Branson, Galactic Suite say they will use Russian rockets to transport their guests into space from a spaceport to be built on an island in the Caribbean.
Ok, you train in the Caribbean, ride on a Russian rocket, stay for 3 days and stick to the walls in a velcro suit like Spiderman? And this cost 4.4 million?
What do you guys think?
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2 comments:
If I had that kind of money to burn, I'd bring along a Grade-A Hottie (tm) to train with me so we can do whoopie in zero G.
Wait.
If I had that kind of money to burn, I'd stay on Earth and get me a DOZEN Grade-A Hotties (tm) to keep me company while we laugh at the idjits who have more money than common sense risk their lives for our fetid amusement!
Like the song says, if I had a million dollars... I'd be rich! And if I had 4.4 million USD I would NOT!!! spend it for three days being sick like a sad monkey in zero-g.
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