The Final Frontier: Details Released on New Trek to Space Program

The nascent, but certainly not undiscussed, niche of space travel is back in the headlines today. Reuters is reporting that a $3 billion anonymous donation will help open The Galactic Suite Space Resort to its first guests in 2012. Barcelona-based Galactic Suite Ltd has been working since 2007 to create a single pod in orbit about 280 miles above Earth that can contain four guests and two astronaut-pilots.

An estimated stay at The Galactic Suite Space Resort will cost about $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, including an eight-week training course on an island in the Caribbean. Galactic Suite Ltd told Reuters that guests will see the sun rise 15 times a day, travel around the world every 80 minutes, and wear velcro suits to crawl around the pod rooms by sticking to the walls.

It will take a day and a half to reach the pod before the three-day stay in orbit.
"When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for three days, rocket and capsule," Calamut said. "With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After three days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth."

More than 43 people have already reserved space for The Galactic Suite Space Resort, and more than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel.