ALL SCI-FI

[Gord Green]

https://www.space.com/40207-space-hotel-launch-2021-aurora-station.html

'Luxury Space Hotel' to Launch in 2021

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | April 5, 2018 01:01pm ET

Well-heeled space tourists will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition.

That startup, called Orion Span, aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022.



"We are launching the first-ever affordable luxury space hotel," said Orion Span founder and CEO Frank Bunger, who unveiled the Aurora Station idea today (April 5) at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. [In Pictures: Private Space Stations of the Future]



"Affordable" is a relative term: A 12-day stay aboard Aurora Station will start at $9.5 million. Still, that's quite a bit less than orbital tourists have paid in the past. From 2001 through 2009, seven private citizens took a total of eight trips to the International Space Station (ISS), paying an estimated $20 million to $40 million each time. (These private missions were brokered by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures and employed Russian Soyuz spacecraft and rockets.)

"There's been innovation around the architecture to make it more modular and more simple to use and have more automation, so we don't have to have EVAs [extravehicular activities] or spacewalks," Bunger said of Aurora Station.

"The goal when we started the company was to create that innovation to make simplicity possible, and by making simplicity possible, we drive a tremendous amount of cost out of it," he told Space.com.

Orion Span is building Aurora Station itself, Bunger added. The company — some of whose key engineering players have helped design and operate the ISS — is manufacturing the hotel in Houston and developing the software required to run it in the Bay Area, he said.

Aurora Station will be about the size of a large private jet's cabin. It'll measure 43.5 feet long by 14.1 feet wide (13.3 by 4.3 meters) and feature a pressurized volume of 5,650 cubic feet (160 cubic m), Orion Span representatives said. For comparison, the ISS is 357 feet (109 m) long and has an internal pressurized volume of 32,333 cubic feet (916 cubic m).

The private outpost will orbit at an altitude of 200 miles (320 kilometers) — a bit lower than the ISS, which is about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth on average. Right now, it's unclear how Aurora Station and its future occupants will get to orbit; Orion Span has yet to confirm any deals with launch providers, Bunger said.

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]."

Orion Span isn't alone in seeking to carve out this path. Several other companies, including Axiom Space and Bigelow Aerospace, also aim to launch commercial space stations to Earth orbit in the next few years to meet anticipated demand from space tourists, national governments, researchers and private industry. (Other private players, including Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are developing vehicles to take paying customers to and from suborbital space, and are scheduled to begin commercial operations soon.)



If you've got $80,000 to spare, you can put a (fully refundable) deposit down on an Aurora Station stay beginning today. Folks who fly up will undergo a three-month training program, the last portion of which will occur aboard the space hotel itself, Bunger said.

To learn more, go to www.orionspan.com.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Custer]

And so "the city of a thousand planets" begins...



Or maybe not!

[Bud Brewster]

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Bless my soul, I finally found an explanation for why the wheel-shaped space stations proposed in the 1950s haven't been attempted. I've read that they were more expensive, but I never understood why.

This article quoted below from Smithsonian's Air&Space clears up the confusion.
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Question: Why haven’t we embraced the pinwheel/circular design of a space station like the one in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey? Is it just plain old dollars and the logistics, or is the design flawed? Would it be a better habitat than the ISS? (Ryan O’Connell, Geraldton, Australia)

Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who proposed such doughnut-shaped, rotating stations back in the early 1950s, certainly thought this was a promising design.

But a rotating station must be structurally stronger than one orbiting in free-fall conditions; a beefier structure means the station is heavier, and thus more costly to build and launch.

The U.S. Skylab station of the early 1970s was designed to be built cheaply using Apollo-Saturn V hardware; getting it up quickly and cheaply was more important than providing the astronauts with artificial gravity. And much of its scientific work was aimed at exploring the effects of free fall (or microgravity) on fundamental physical, chemical, materials science, or biomedical processes. A rotating station destroys that free-fall environment.

The ISS was designed with free-fall science in mind, too, so artificial gravity was not considered. A rotating centrifuge for small lab animals was supposed to be a part of an ISS science module, but it was canceled for cost reasons. One recent proposal suggested adding a rotating section to ISS to prove the technology of artificial gravity for Mars travel. So far, cost has prevented any such design from ever getting past the drawing board.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Another problem is ensuring an air-tight seal on any exterior type centrifuge that is combined with a zero-G section. Either the whole thing rotates or no part does.

The internal design from the DISCOVERY on 2001:ASO would seem to be a good compromise.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, I understand that our fledgling technology just can't manage to do space stations the right way yet.

But until we can solve all the problems, living in space for lengthy periods means spending a lot of time exercising just to keep from loosing muscle and bone mass.

There's another important consideration, too.

An article at Smithsonian.com says that mothers who try to carry babies to term in space will risk even more dangers than they do on Earth — and as we all know, even that ain't no walk in the park!

So, here's my take on the subject.

We've got to have space stations that allow people to live healthy and rewarding lives for many years at a time.

Why?

One reason is so that interplanetary vessels like mining ships from the asteroids won't have to land on Earth every time they bring their rich cargoes back home. These space miners will need a little R&R in an environment with gravity to reverse the effects of the months they've spent in weightlessness.

A rotating space station like the one shown below could have sections which provide gravity of different strengths, so that space explorers who were recovering from long flights could experience various levels for specified periods until they've recovered completely.





That said, we need to prioritize our efforts to develop the technology needed for space exploration. The first priority is to develop propulsion systems which are more advanced than the traditional action / reaction rocket engines.

Once we've done that, it will revolutionize our space program (along with all forms of transportation on Earth) and make it possible to lift heavier payloads into orbit. It will also mean we can make faster (and cheaper) trips to the Moon and the other planets, and we can finally create large orbiting habitats that are both practical and affordable.

You know . . . like this one.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

I'm trying to picture some of the more mundane aspects of space tourism.

For example, who takes care of housekeeping after a visit by those guests of "affordable luxury"?

Will the former astronaut crewmembers be trained to clean up the habitat after a wild party?

Will they be tasked with turning down the sheets, leaving chocolate mints on the pillows, and putting out new shampoo capsules for the next guests or between sleep periods?

Who cleans the toilets and showers?

Do they collect the various articles inadvertently left behind and turn them in to a repatriation service?

Are housekeeper and concierge tips included in the package cost?
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...or not...

WayneO
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