First Luxury Space Hotel to Offer an Out-of-this-World Experience

Orion Span’s compact Aurora Station will boast an interior comparable to that of a Gulfstream jet, and will accommodate four travellers and two crew members for 12-day stays 200 miles above the earth.

In a press release Orion Span said it would take “what was historically a 24-month training regimen to prepare travellers to visit a space station and streamline it to three months, at a fraction of the cost”.

Customers would subsequently understand basic spaceflight, orbital mechanics and life in pressurized environments in space.

The company said travellers would then “enjoy the exhilaration of zero gravity … gaze at the northern and southern aurora through the many windows, soar over their hometowns, take part in research experiments such as growing food while in orbit, revel in a virtual reality experience on the holodeck, and stay in touch or live stream with their loved ones back home via high-speed wireless internet access.”

Guests will be charged $9.5 million each, or about $791,666 a night, for the trip. Refundable deposits of $80,000 can now be made online.

Orion Span would not be the first operation to offer rides into space. A number of wealthy travellers have flown to the International Space Station (ISS) with the Russian space programme – which said recently it too plans to open a “space hotel” in 2022.

Dennis Tito, an American businessman, took the first “space tourism” flight in 2001, visiting the ISS for a reported $20 million.

Last year, the SpaceX founder Elon Musk said his company planned to send two private citizens on a trip around the moon.