Imagine that you are calling your hotel for your vacation, and the receptionist asks: “Would you like your suite with a view of the Moon or Earth?” It may sound like a quote from a low-budget fiction movie, but according to some recent articles published, it can be possible in the not-too-distant future! (1) Going to a hotel for your honeymoon in space tourism season seems like it is just around the corner.
The Californian company, the Gateway Foundation, announced their plans for the first space hotel in 2019. This hotel will have rooms with artificial gravity for you to walk, sit and eat as you do on Earth; suits like regular hotels have, and it will seem like a rotating wheel. For now, it is scheduled to be operational in 2027. (2)
This rendering offers a glimpse at what the space hotel could look like. Orbital Assembly Corporation – Voyager Station
However, for traveling to space, we don’t need to wait until that time for sure. For now, people started to go to the very edge of space and go back to the Earth as space tourists. This is called ‘sub-orbital space tourism’.
What is This Space Tourism?
Astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Yuri Gagarin are known as space heroes, and we all look at them with admiration because what they did was not something that we can all do and was extraordinary. However, nowadays, we often come across the news about space tourism because it has become a new phenomenon, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin starting a race for more affordable space travel.
Space tourism is the activity of traveling into space for pleasure and interest, rather than as a job by definition, and it is not a news break. On April 30, 2001, US millionaire Dennis Tito spent $20 million and arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) via a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the world’s first space tourist. (3)
Thanks to the increasing number of companies interested in space tourism and technological developments in this field, space tourists have increased. These private space flights of humans intended to enter outer space at their own expense or that of another private person such as Elon Musk, who championed a human mission to Mars. (4)
In the end, of course, this new phenomenon has both risks for space tourists and Earth. On the other hand, it has advantages for communities. Together we will experience what future developments will bring us in this context.
References
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Eric Baldwin. “World’s First Space Hotel to Open in 2027” March 15 2021. ArchDaily. Accessed September 20 2021. <https://www.archdaily.com/958528/worlds-first-space-hotel-to-open-in-2027> ISSN 0719-8884
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Street, F. (2021, March 4). World’s first space Hotel scheduled to open in 2027. CNN. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/voyager-station-space-hotel-scn/index.html.
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Street, F. (2021, April 30). First space TOURIST Dennis TITO: ‘it was the greatest moment of my life’. CNN. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/space-tourism-20-year-anniversary-scn/index.html.
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Cohen Eriḳ, & Spector, S. (2019). Space tourism: The elusive dream. Emerald Publishing.
