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Another space station hotel company enters the market

Capitalism in space: A new space station hotel start-up, Orion Span, hopes to launch their first module by 2021, and begin accommodating guests by 2022.

Aurora Station will accommodate four paying guests and two crewmembers; these latter personnel will likely be former astronauts, Bunger said. Most of the guests will probably be private space tourists, at least initially, but Orion Span will be available to a variety of customers, including government space agencies, he added.

And the space hotel will get bigger over time, if everything goes according to plan. As demand grows, Orion Span will launch additional modules to link up with the original core outpost, Bunger said. “Our long-term vision is to sell actual space in those new modules,” he said. “We’re calling that a space condo. So, either for living or subleasing, that’s the future vision here — to create a long-term, sustainable human habitation in LEO [low Earth orbit].”

This makes three companies vying to build the first private space stations, with Bigelow and Axiom Space already in the game.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Michael Dean Miller

    .

    Encourage a space-faring civilization with these 3 simple words :

    Zero Gravity Sex.

    .

  • Joe From Houston

    Here we go again with the Tom and Jerry Show. Tom (NASA) wants to catch Jerry (Space Tourism) and eat him. That way he gets what he wants which is a warm place to sleep. If he doesn’t do his job, he gets punished by the humans living there. Punishment includes being kicked outside into the cold winter environment by the humans that are scared of mice.

    All Jerry wants is what every mouse wants; a warm place to sleep and some cheese.

    As long as there is cheese in the frig and the cat is away, the mice will play.

  • Edward

    In addition to space hotels by Orion Span’s Aurora Station, Axiom Space, and Bigelow Aerospace, Ixion (a group comprised of NanoRacks, Space Systems/Loral, and United Launch Alliance) is also planning to build a space station for science laboratories, and Orbital ATK has proposed using a modified version of their Cygnus cargo ship as a module for a space station, specifically for the proposed lunar space station (currently known as LOP-G).

    It is exciting that a fifth company, Orion Span, is working toward building manned space habitats. It suggests that there is a lot of interest in this kind of business. Whether five companies can do all that is proposed is still a question that needs to be answered, and the article does not talk about financial backing or fundraising for the company, but this is exciting news nonetheless.

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