Yup, we’re officially in the age of luxury-hotels-in-space.

Houston-based Orion Space Inc., developers of the Aurora Station, announced this week that they plan to launch a modular space station hotel in late 2021, and welcome their first guests by the following year.

The excursion will take six guests 200 miles above our planet over a period of 12 days, with 384 sunrises and sunsets made visible from outer space.

Frank Bunger, a former software engineer and now founder and CEO of Orion Span, told Moneyweb how far up their heads are in the clouds:

“We want to get people into space because it’s the final frontier for our civilisation.

Not everyone wants to experience the final frontier, though. Glad he knows it:

“We’re not selling a hey-let’s-go-to-the-beach equivalent in space,” Bunger said.

“We’re selling the experience of being an astronaut. You reckon that there are people who are willing to pay to have that experience.”

For the lazy:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought I’d be an astronaut one day. Oh, also a multi-millionaire. Lucky me:

The 12-day stay starts at $9.5 million per person, or about $791,666 a night. Aurora Station is planned as a 35-by-14-foot module, or roughly the interior volume of a Gulfstream G550 private jet, according to Bunger. The station would accommodate as many as four guests, plus the two crew. The company requires an $80,000 deposit, which is fully refundable, and began accepting payments on Thursday.

Takeoff is still somewhat indefinite, with Orion Span assessing potential sources of funding without disclosing just how much they need to get going.

It can, however, be compared to the type of commercial venture more common over the last 10 years, with smaller launch costs and increased venture capital.

Bryce Space & Technology, a consulting firm specialising in the field, says that startup space companies have attracted $7,9 billion since 2015.

Former space policy adviser to President Barack Obama and employee of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Phil Larson, is optimistic:

“The commercialisation of LEO (low Earth orbit) is an exciting prospect, but it will be an exercise in determining what ideas are more real than others.”

Both Orion Span’s chief architect and chief technical officers are former NASA employees, which is probably why they “developed proprietary technology to drive a full order of magnitude of cost out of the design and manufacture of a space station”.

This means that all the company’s designs will work with most of the current launch configurations, including Arianespace, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, with the possibility of partnering with government space agency, too.

Bunger went on to say that the only reason Orion Space can charge less than $10 million per person is due to generally declining launch costs:

“Everybody’s forecasting that they’re going to fall.

“Almost every week there’s another rocket launch company that’s starting up with a new way to get to orbit cheaper, faster, better.”

Orion Space is also not the only entrepreneurial firm with a goal of cheapening access to space. Bigelow Aerospace, a product of lodging billionaire Robert Bigelow, already deployed an “8-foot, 3 000-pound inflatable activity module” on the International Space Station (ISS) in May of 2016.

NASA extended the two-year service period for this storage module to keep it as part of the space station until 2021 at least.

Axiom Space, another Houston-based company started by ex-NASA scientists, has plans of launching “habitation modules” that will compliment the ISS.

And:

Arizona-based World View Enterprises Inc. is developing a fleet of high-altitude platforms, called stratollites, carried by balloons to the edge of space.

The stratollites are used for communications, surveillance, weather forecasting, atmospheric research, and other applications. Last week, World View said it had raised a total of $48.5 million.

If you’re confused as I am, it’s alright. Commercial spaceflight is yet to account for one single human in space, never mind keeping them there for a two-week holiday.

Also, Aurora Station travellers will have to undergo three months of rigorous training that covers not only “basic spaceflight, orbital mechanics, and pressurised environments in space”, but physical exercise on spacecraft systems at the company’s facility in Houston.

Sound like fun?

[source:moneyweb]