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Visitors describing a stay in a top luxury hotel as “out of this world” may have to revise their thinking when Orbital Technologies opens its first hotel in 2016. Their hotel will be just that!

Russia has just announced plans for its first space hotel, orbiting 217 miles above the earth. The hotel will accommodate seven guests in four comfortable cabins, boutique hotel style, and prices will be steep – an estimated £100,000 ($160,000) for the accommodation, plus the cost of Soyuz transport. Rocket transfer will take two days – costing another £500,000 ($800,000). At least when you get there, you won’t have to budget for designer shopping or knocking up high-end restaurant and bar bills.

The restaurant food will be prepared on planet earth and delivered by rocket to the space hotel, a great improvement on the freeze-dried food suffered in the past by astronauts. Alcohol will be strictly prohibited but there will be an assortment of mineral water, fruit juices and iced tea.

Huge windows will look out on space from the hotel rooms and guests will be given cameras and binoculars to marvel at the views – intergalactic ones of course. The self contained Commercial Space Station will recycle waste water, and air will be filtered and then returned to the cabin. Due to weightlessness, guests will sleep vertically in bags attached to the walls and showers could be particularly tricky to manage.

This new idea in adventure travel is aimed at wealthy individuals and companies wanting to send individuals into space to do research. It certainly adds a new aspect to luxury hotel vacations.

by Gillian

Booked your holiday for 2012? What about something a bit different – outer space for instance.

It’s reported that the first hotel in space will be open for business and accepting tourists within three years, with the help of $3 billion (£1.8 billion) of funding from a wealthy anonymous space enthusiast.

The Galactic Suite Space Resort - a single pod in orbit 280 miles above the earth and travelling at more than 18,000 miles an hour - will have two astronaut-pilots and welcome four guests at a time.

The guests will have a three-night stay preceded by an eight-week training course on a tropical island. And, despite the fact that a return ticket will cost around 3 million euros (£2.7 million /$4.4 million), more than 200 people have reportedly expressed an interest and 43 have already made a reservation.

During their stay, guests will see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They’ll wear Velcro suits to enable them to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

Xavier Claramunt, the Chief Executive of Galactic Suite Ltd and a former aerospace engineer, said the project would put his company at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it.

He forecast that space travel would become commonplace in the future. “It’s very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space,” he said.

by Andy Moreton

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson is nothing if not ambitious.

Not content with flying passengers across the Atlantic, he’s now unveiled an aircraft to be used to launch tourists into space. The high-altitude jet will act as the mother-ship for a spacecraft, releasing it in mid-air to take two crew and six passengers on sub-orbital flights.

A hundred or so people have already paid £100,000 ($200,000) each to be among the first to make the tourist trips – among them, apparently, the actress, Victoria Principal, who also wants to pilot the spacecraft. Sir Richard predicts the maiden voyage will take place in 18 months.

A crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts gathered inside a hangar in the Mojave Desert in California for the unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo, Eve (the Eve bit is in honour of Sir Richard’s mother). Virgin Galactic commissioned the innovative aerospace designer Burt Rutan to build the mother-ship and spacecraft at his factory in California.

The mother-ship is a white, four-engined jet designed to cradle SpaceShipTwo under its wing and release it at 50,000 feet in the air. Once separated, SpaceShipTwo will fire its hybrid rocket and climb some 60 miles above the Earth.

Some hurdles remain before Virgin Galactic customers can experience zero gravity. For instance, WhiteKnightTwo must undergo a rigorous flight testing programme, beginning in the autumn.

But Sir Richard is clearly looking to the long-term, envisaging many tens of thousands of people taking holidays in space.
“Let’s go twenty years forward,” he said. “If all this goes to plan, I hope that we will have a hotel in space; and in that hotel I hope we will have small spaceships that can offer an excursion around the moon.”

If it happens to be a luxury boutique hotel in space, be assured that it will be a welcome addition to Luxique’s stable and we’ll get you the best rates (after all, you’ve probably paid the earth for the flights).

by Andy Moreton