We finally know what a hotel stay in space will look like, as new renderings of a luxury space hotel (complete with artificial gravity) have been released. Plans for the space hotel, officially called the Von Braun Space Station, show sleek guest rooms with modern design elements and modules that will act as gathering spaces for guests to eat, drink, and relax.
While the wheel-shaped, rotating structure is futuristic, as expected, the experience on board may be fairly familiar. “There will also be many of the things you see on cruise ships: restaurants, bars, musical concerts, movie screenings, and educational seminars,” Tim Alatorre, senior design architect for the hotel, told Dezeen in August.
The space hotel’s guest rooms will have a cozier vibe than the shiny surfaces depicted on space stations in movies.
When it opens in 2025, the space station—a project of The Gateway Foundation—will feature 24 individual modules that will function as guest rooms. But don’t expect to see only sterile, industrial surfaces like in space stations depicted in movies. Alatorre and his team want to incorporate materials that mimic natural elements like wood and stone, but that have been designed for orbit, The Gateway Foundation said in a press release. Earthy tones will also give a warmth to the rooms, which will get up to 500 square feet in size. And, of course, every room will have a stellar view of the curvature of the Earth.
Von Braun Space Station will host up to 100 guests per week, but there will be as many as 450 people on board at any given time, including more than 100 crew members, as well as scientists and government officials who will be able to rent dedicated modules for research.
Although some areas of the space station will be allotted to research, guests of the hotel should expect vastly different circumstances than what astronauts on the International Space Station have to contend with. Von Braun Space Station will have a slow rotation speed to keep guests comfortable and, maybe more importantly, it’ll have artificial gravity. With some gravitational force, guests can use the bathroom, eat, and drink in ways similar to those upon Earth’s surface: no Tang or freeze-dried food required.
The space station will have a restaurant and bar, an entertainment stage, and a gym. Artificial gravity will make it easy to eat and drink.
“We are planning on full-service kitchens with all of the dishes you would expect on a luxury cruise ship or in a major hotel,” said Alatorre. “A lot of the logistical issues for food service have been worked out years ago by the cruise ship industry.” The hotel’s drinking water will come from Earth, while showers will use recycled water.
In some parts of the hotel, however, guests will be able to experience zero-gravity. This is outer space, after all. Areas for low-gravity basketball, low-gravity trampolining, and rock climbing (probably made significantly easier without the weight of Earth’s pull on you) are all on the docket, according to Alatorre.
Although low-gravity trampolining sounds like a novel hotel activity now, Alatorre predicts that and a lot of the other attributes of space tourism will feel commonplace in little more than a decade. “Eventually, going to space will just be another option people will pick for their vacation, just like going on a cruise, or going to Disney World,” Alatorre told Dezeen. “These will be true cities in space that will be ports of call for those coming and going from the moon and Mars.”
