© Galactic Suite
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Competing directly with Richard Branson’s nascent space tourism ambitions, a Barcelona-based firm says they’re within a couple years of launching a full-fledged space resort. The Galactic Suite Space Resort will take mega-rich tourists into orbit for three nights at a time, with round trips based out of a spaceport on an as-yet-undisclosed island. The whole thing actually sounds a little shaky, and the 2012 time line has some people raising their eyebrows, but we want to believe!
The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.. During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear Velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.
Now for some concerns. We have some quibbles with the way they’re branding their space tourist venture, which is something we’re inclined to take seriously on account of the whole “we care about tourism and think space is awesome” thing. The intro on their official site is New Age-y to the point of obnoxiousness. It’s got a montage of slow-pan globe images, a woman hovering in a lotus position, and the kind of music we thought was exclusively reserved for B-rate cop movies. The phrase “the birth of homo spaciens” makes an unironic appearance, which was startling because we’ve never heard it unaccompanied by a rim shot. We’re 95% sure they took their fetus picture – yes, there’s a fetus picture – from the cover of a circa Reagan administration VHS of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even the typeface is grating.
All of which is a shame because they’re a hotel that floats in mothereffing space. Space tourism will gain mainstream currency not because it’s a transcendental soul-changing experience that aligns your chi with the rest of the universe – though it might – but because it’s mothereffing space. There are rockets, there are jets, there’s some fire the propels you out of the earth’s gravity well – and at the end you get to spend time in orbit. Deeper Meanings are unnecessary. Eyes on the ball folks.