Developed by OAC, the Voyager Station can be operational as early as 2027 with the infrastructure to be built into the earth’s orbit.
The multi-purpose and multi-functional space station will be a large circle and will rotate to create artificial gravity that will be adjusted to a level similar to the gravity found on the Moon’s surface.
Voyager Station’s hotel will include many of the features you would expect from a cruise ship, including themed restaurants, health spa and cinema.
It will have a series of compartments attached to the outside of the rotating ring, and some of these pods will be sold to the likes of NASA and ESA for space exploration.
No details were revealed about the cost of building the space station or the cost of spending a night at the hotel, although OAC says that reusable launch vehicles like the SpaceX Falcon 9 and future Starship have made the costs cheaper to build.
The Voyager Class space station will consist of a series of rings, with a series of ‘modules’ attached to the very edge of the rings.
Some of these 24 modules will be run by the Gateway Foundation and will be for things like crew rooms, air, water, and electricity.
They will also include a gym, kitchen, restaurant, bar and other necessary facilities for people due to their long stay at the station.
Other modules will be leased or sold to private companies and governments.
For example, people can purchase one of the 20 × 12 meter modules for a private villa or multiple modules to create a hotel with spa, cinema, and more.
Government agencies can use the station to house their own science modules or as a training center for astronauts preparing to go to Mars.
According to an idea by Wernher von Braun, the idea of building a space station in orbit around a central, circular wheel dates back to the early days of space travel.
He was one of the architects of the NASA Apollo program and proposed a spinning wheel-shaped habitat to create artificial gravity in the 1950s.
A similar idea, but on a much larger scale, the Voyager station concept first emerged with the launch of the Gateway Foundation in 2012.
OAC, the company established by the foundation to realize its orbital station vision, was established in 2018 with the goal of being operational by 2027.
If fully noticed, it will be the largest human-created object ever placed in space.
While the cost of developing and building the space station was not revealed, with the launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 and, in the future, SpaceX Starship, it became more convenient to put large objects into orbit.
The average cost of launching material into space for a long time was about $ 8,000 per kilo, but the reusable nature of the Falcon 9 özgü seen it drop to $ 2,000 / kilo, and SpaceX estimates Starship will increase it to several hundred dollars.
Starship and other fully reusable spacecraft in the future will make the station viable as it will allow for regular and fast connections between Earth and Voyager.
The team includes NASA veterans, pilots, engineers and architects who created a system that includes multiple compartments and a high-speed ‘space train’ for different purposes.
Each of these 24 integrated living modules will be 20 meters long and 12 meters wide and will have a different function from hotel rooms to movie theaters.
The firm also expects its ring to include auditoriums, concert halls, bars, libraries, gyms, and everything else you can see on a cruise ship, but this will travel the entire world every 90 minutes.
First, the team plans to kontrol the concept with a much smaller scale prototype station and a free-flying micro gravity facility similar to the International Space Station.
“This will be the next industrial revolution,” said John Blincow, founder of the Gateway Foundation, adding that it will create a new space industry.
Rotation is ‘vital’, Blincow says, as it is not convenient for humans to be on a non-gravity space station for long periods of time and may want to stay in space for months, especially when working in a hotel.
“People need gravity to keep their bodies from disintegrating,” Blincow said, adding that the station could help to understand how much gravity our body needs, as it can increase or decrease the rate of rotation to have higher or lower gravity.
When testing is complete, STAR Structure will build the frame for the Cage Assembly Robot Voyager in orbit.
The first space construction will be a 61-meter ring of gravity in low Earth orbit, and at Mars’ level, 40% of Earth’s gravity will be able to rotate to create gravity.
This will take about two years to build and is called a ‘short-term demonstrator’. It will take three days to assemble it in space.
While the hotel is the first target of the artificial gravity space station, the company hopes to lease pod space to agencies including NASA and ESA in the future.
/ World’s First ‘Space Hotel’ Project / World’s First ‘Space Hotel’ Project /
