San Mateo Startup Announces Plans To Build Space Hotel
SAN MATEO (CBS SF) -- There may come a day when you will be debating whether to spend a week on a beach in Hawaii or living the dream of being an astronaut inside a hotel floating in space.
US-based space technology start-up Orion Span has announced plans to built the Aurora Station -- the first luxury hotel in space. It's all part of a boom among some of high techs brightest stars -- Elon Musk, Jeff Bazos and Paul Allen -- to privatize space travel.
"We're selling more than the room but the experience of being there instead of the room itself," Orion Space CEO Frank Bunger told KPIX 5.
The fully modular space station will host six people at a time, including two crew members, for 12-day trips of space travel. It plans to welcome its first guests in 2022.
But the experience will not come cheap. The price tag for a 12-day adventure will be $10 million.
For that pricetag, hotel guests will fly at a height of 200 miles above the Earth's surface in Low Earth Orbit, or LEP, where they will witness incredible views of the blue planet.
They will also get a taste of what's it is like to be a working astronaut.
"We're doing experiments... growing food in space... and participating in other research and heroes welcome like we do on earth," Bunger said.
The startup, based in San Mateo, will begin building the Aurora in the near future and Bunger said the company is already booking reservations. The $80,000 deposit is fully refundable, should applicants find themselves unable to rise to the full $9.5 million.
"The response has been fantastic," he told KPIX 5. "We already have three full flights booked so we are booked into mid 2022."
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