Startup Proposes Space Hotel To Open In 2027: What You Need To Know

While Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson are flying celebrities and deep-pocketed travelers on relatively brief trips to the edge of space, a California start-up has announced plans for a space hotel that will enable travelers to spend more time away from the Earth.

What Happened: According to an Astronomy.com report, Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) is seeking to open Voyager Station, an intergalactic luxury resort, by 2027. The out-of-this-world destination is being designed to accommodate 280 guests and 112 crew members and will feature a restaurant, bar, concert hall, gym and cinema.

To achieve a sense of gravity, Voyager Station is being designed on the rotating wheel concept popularized in the 1950s by Wernher von Braun and visualized in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” This approach, according to the company, relies on centrifugal force to replicate Earth-level gravity.

What Happens Next: OAC is somewhat vague on what a vacation on Voyager Station is going to cost, and it doesn't seem this will be marketed to budget-minded tourists. After all, Tom Hanks dissed Bezos when the Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN founder tried to get the Oscar-winning actor to pay $28 million for a Blue Origin flight, while Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc SPCE is charging $450,000 per ticket for its next round of space tourism flights.

“We want to make this an easy choice,” said Tim Alatorre, OAC’s vice president and the Voyager Station architect. “If you want to go to Paris for a week or you want to go to space for a week, we want it to be a question of preference, not of money.”

However, Alatorre admitted that getting to Voyager Station would require a sizeable transaction, adding that “the resort is cheap — it’s the flight that’s expensive.”

Photos: Orbital Assembly Corporation