California-based start-up Orbital Assembly Corporation has announced the launch of "Voyager Station," the first-ever space hotel in low Earth orbit. Construction is expected to begin in 2025, and passengers will be welcomed two years later.
Voyager Station will look like a large circle with a diameter of 488 meters. It will house restaurants, a cinema, a spa, a library, a concert hall, bars and a sports hall, for a maximum of 450 people on board with 150 crew members.
The hotel will be composed of 24 living modules of 20 meters long and 12 meters wide and will rotate on itself to generate an artificial gravity that will allow its passengers to stand. The gravity will be about one-sixth of that found on Earth, the same level of gravity as on the Moon. The space station will circle the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of 1,900 kilometers.
If this project is realized in six years, it will be one of the most ambitious initiatives of our century. In the meantime, a first flight of tourists in a Space X rocket is planned by the end of 2021.
