If you have a lot of disposable income and you want to make your friends jealous, book a stay at the International Space Station (ISS). Russia’s space agency, the Roscosmos State Corporation, is investing in a new luxury hotel on the ISS. Those wishing to visit the satellite can expect to pay between $40 million and $60 million per trip, which can last for up to a month, reports Popular Mechanics.
The five-star accommodations will include private cabins with huge windows, personal washrooms, gym equipment, and wi-fi. In addition to incredible views of space and Earth, tourists will have the opportunity to take space walks with professional cosmonauts.
Put off by the price tag? Guests wishing to stay at the hotel will have two years to pay for their trip through installments.
The hotel module is expected to be similar in construction to Russia’s Science and Power Module (NEM-1), which the country plans on delivering to the ISS in 2021. Russia will tap both private and state investments to build the luxury hotel, which will cost between $279 million and $446 million. The module is expected to take five years to build, so it won’t be shipped to the ISS until 2022 at the earliest.
Aspiring space travellers who are impatient may want to consider other tourism projects that are in the works. Private groups such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Russian firm KosmoKurs, are all offering unique space travel experiences for the uber-wealthy.
Blue Origin recently revealed concept images and a video of a vessel that will transport passengers to the edge of our planet’s atmosphere, 62 miles above Earth. Bezos hopes to take tourists on the trip by early 2019. He believes people will be enticed by the capsule’s “largest windows ever in space.” He explained in the spring: “We’ve been designing the capsule interior with an eye toward precision engineering, safety, and comfort. Every seat’s a window seat.”
KosmoKurs wants to send passengers 124 miles about Earth by 2020. They plan on charging space tourists between $200,000 and $250,000. Virgin Galactic has yet to set a launch date for its space vessel but is already accepting reservations.
