In recent news, the Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) and Gateway Foundation have announced their plans to build the world’s first space hotel. The station will have artificial gravity, and its guests will be able to enjoy restaurants, theaters, and personal quarters. The space facility will have accommodation for up to 400 guests, and its construction will start in just five years.
The World’s First Space Hotel Will Be Called ‘Voyager Station’
The OAC and Gateway Foundation have big plans for their Voyager Station, and they revealed those back in 2019. However, they will have to first build the massive spinning wheel that will serve as the base for the station in low Earth orbit. This first phase of the construction is now planned to start in 2025. While details such as the cost for the building of the station and the price or a ticket on it are still far from clear, the companies involved have stated that the proliferation of SpaceX’s versatile and reusable Falcon 9 rockets will allow them to keep relatively low costs for transportation of materials and people to space.
The Space Hotel Will Be Comprised of Pods Connected to the Outer Rim of a Big Wheel Structure
When the spinning wheel structure for Voyager Station is complete, the pods that will contain recreational facilities and hotel guest rooms will be hooked to its outer rim. Access to a spa and gym will also be provided to the personnel and guests. John Blincow, who created the OAC back in 2012, said in an interview that this space hotel would be the next industrial revolution. The Gateway Foundation doubled down on this statement by saying that building the Voyager Station will be one of the first important steps when it comes to colonizing space and eventually other worlds. An OAC official has also stated that the station will not be built with utilitarian-military use in mind but for the comfort of its guests.
It is not lost to anyone that the Voyager Station looks remarkably similar to the space hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is not a coincidence because Voyager Station is using many of the designs made by Wernher von Braun, which Kubrick also used to create the spacecraft for his iconic movie.