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Space Hotel To Open In 2012

Filed under: Journeys


Will space tourism stays be possible in just a couple of years? A Spanish company has said that their Galactic Suite Space Resort orbiting hotel will open in 2012. The company is offering a three-night stay for €3 million. It sounds exorbitant but that price does include an eight-week training course on a tropical island and the travel on a rocket to reach the hotel which will float 280 miles above the earth. The company says that they already have 43 reservations.

The Independent reports that "an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast" has given the company more than €2 billion to finance the hotel. The hotel will rotate the earth 15 times per day offering a trip around the world in just 80 minutes. The modular space habitat willl be built around a central docking platform. Each pod has a window at the base and tourists will be experiencing weightlessness during their stay.

Virgin Galactic Reveals Spaceship Designs

Filed under: Wings


Sir Richard Branson is so excited about the design for the Virgin Galactic spaceship designs he's willing to wear them. Yesterday, Branson recently showed off the design of Virgin Galactic's new space launch system based on the X Prize-winning technology of SpaceShipOne. The White Knight Two carrier aircraft is being built at Scaled Composites in the Mojave Desert and should begin flight testing this summer. The mothership is the world's largest, all carbon composite aircraft and is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines to launch SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space flight. SpaceShipTwo is now 60% complete. It's good news for those eager for space travel, already 80 of SpaceShipTwo's first passengers have gone through medical assessment and preliminary training. Thousands more have indicated their eagerness to board experience space flight once Virgin Galactic is operational.

Plans For Spaceport America Revealed

Filed under: Wings


We first heard about the plans for Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America back in December 2005. The home base for space travel promises to bring space tourism to the New Mexico desert. Now the team of US and British architects and designers working on the project have released design renderings of Spaceport America. The design is from a US-British consortium of URS Corporation and Foster + Partners and shows a low-slung design which is tucked into the earth and uses passive energy for heating and cooling with photovoltaic panels for electricity and water recycling. Massive windows open out to the runway. People enter through a deep channel cut in the landscape. The terminal and hanger are expected to cost around $31 million and construction will begin in 2008 with late 2009 or early 2010 projected as a completion date. Big pics of the design drawings in the gallery.

[via Aero-News Network]



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