Earth’s Orbit — Get a grip on your wallet, for a cool $9.5 million, you could take a vacation to the Von Braun Rotating Space Station which is expected to be the first commercial space construction project in history.
Plans for the cruise-ship style floating hotel come from the Californian company The Gateway Foundation.
Their goal is to begin construction by 2025 and to be open for business by 2027.
Initially, the station will be used by national space agencies to conduct low gravity research, but will also offer some rooms to space tourists who want to experience life on a large space station with the comfort of low gravity and the feel of a nice hotel.
Newly released images and video of the station shows it resembles a rotating wheel comprised of 24 modules.
The wheel’s rotation will create a simulated gravity.
The design is actually two concentric rings, the inner ring is designed for docking and unloading while the outer ring is the Habitation Ring.
This is where people will reside in 40x60 ft Modules that will come in a variety of configurations including:
- Air Water Power (AWP) Module
- Gymnasium and Assembly (GA) Module
- Kitchen, Restaurant and Bar (KRB) Module
- Crew Quarters Module, which will be configurable for gravity and micro-gravity habitation.
- Privately owned modules used for villas, hotels, or commercial activity.
- Government owned modules used for scientific research, training and staging facilities.
Hotels chains will operate the rooms in the tourist modules and restaurant chains operate the different restaurants.
In case of an emergency, the hotel has emergency escape vehicles that will be able to evacuate the entire 450 person population of the space hotel, if necessary.
The Gateway Foundation's hotel design is named for Wernher von Braun, an aerospace engineer who pioneered rocket technology, first in Germany and later in the United States.
The Von Braun station is not the only one in development, US-based space tech startup Orion Span released plans earlier this year for a luxury space hotel called Aurora Station, which it hopes to launch in 2022.
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