On my msn homepage, I caught a glimpse of this article a few weeks ago and was absolutely dumbfounded. At first I thought it was a joke, the title “Spanish venture aims to build space hotel,” but after reading it apparently this business enterprise Galactic Suite located in Barcelona, Spain is very serious about opening a hotel in space in 2012. According to the company’s architects, the hotels guests would have pay $4 million dollars a head for three days, and before their departure, guests would participate get eight intense weeks of space camp training on a tropical island. Once tourists arrive at the hotel by means of private shuttles, as they orbit they will view the sun rise fifteen times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls.
The reasoning for the pod like shape of the rooms is due to the fact that they have to be able to fit into a rocket to make it to space. According to the company’s director Xavier Claramunt, “It’s the bathrooms in zero gravity that are the biggest challenge; how to accommodate the more intimate activities of the guests is not easy.” Also, guests will participate in scientific experiments during their space voyage. First just an idea and a hobby of the former aerospace engineer, Claramunt stated that it became a reality when a space enthusiast remaining anonymous agreed to provide most of the $3 billion needed to make it happen.
Galactic Suite is not even the only company with plans for space hotels by 2012, other businesses are aiming to put hotels in orbit too. For one 4Frontiers Corp. located in Florida and CTAE in Barcelona have jumped on the bandwagon, and Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace have already launched two inflatable prototypes for a privately built space station, and is planning to send up its first habitable module, as well as California-based Space Island Group who have also been working on a space hotel of their own.
Claramunt also said that his company is negotiating with private investors from Japan, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates, evident of how lucrative the space business could be. A statistic he pointed out, “We have calculated that there are 40,000 people in the world who could afford to stay at the hotel. Whether they will want to spend money on going into space, we just don’t know.”
I find this to be ridiculous. Four billion dollars spent on just one of these projects, not to mention all of the others that are also springing up in hopes that people will spend the money to avoid whatever pre-conceived notions of what 2012 has in store for us that has not even been proven. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest wastes of money I can think of. Can you imagine how much good all of that money could do for the world if invested in the proper places; invested on more realistic issues actually backed by science, such as our crises of energy shortages, and dangerous CO2 levels in our atmosphere? Geez, I can’t even imagine how many resources these privately funded projects are going to consume just to get these hotels in orbit. With a massive amount of money such as this, so much can be invested into communities, revitalizing them, and kick starting our transformation to truly ‘green’ living, as well as obtaining a successful efficient form of renewable energy. A great deal of things need to be done here on Earth to ensure the safety of our only home before we go out into space, like a bunch of unprepared cowboys. Nothing may happen on 2012, just like Y2K. It is really important that we do not lose our composure. We only have one home and we all share it, I can’t believe selfishness and the crookedness of priorities could ever make it to this extreme.
Resources
"Spanish venture aims to build space hotel But will Galactic Suite go into orbit by2012 as promised?." msnbc.com Technology & Science Space msn, 10 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/20216344/>.
The reasoning for the pod like shape of the rooms is due to the fact that they have to be able to fit into a rocket to make it to space. According to the company’s director Xavier Claramunt, “It’s the bathrooms in zero gravity that are the biggest challenge; how to accommodate the more intimate activities of the guests is not easy.” Also, guests will participate in scientific experiments during their space voyage. First just an idea and a hobby of the former aerospace engineer, Claramunt stated that it became a reality when a space enthusiast remaining anonymous agreed to provide most of the $3 billion needed to make it happen.
Galactic Suite is not even the only company with plans for space hotels by 2012, other businesses are aiming to put hotels in orbit too. For one 4Frontiers Corp. located in Florida and CTAE in Barcelona have jumped on the bandwagon, and Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace have already launched two inflatable prototypes for a privately built space station, and is planning to send up its first habitable module, as well as California-based Space Island Group who have also been working on a space hotel of their own.
Claramunt also said that his company is negotiating with private investors from Japan, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates, evident of how lucrative the space business could be. A statistic he pointed out, “We have calculated that there are 40,000 people in the world who could afford to stay at the hotel. Whether they will want to spend money on going into space, we just don’t know.”
I find this to be ridiculous. Four billion dollars spent on just one of these projects, not to mention all of the others that are also springing up in hopes that people will spend the money to avoid whatever pre-conceived notions of what 2012 has in store for us that has not even been proven. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest wastes of money I can think of. Can you imagine how much good all of that money could do for the world if invested in the proper places; invested on more realistic issues actually backed by science, such as our crises of energy shortages, and dangerous CO2 levels in our atmosphere? Geez, I can’t even imagine how many resources these privately funded projects are going to consume just to get these hotels in orbit. With a massive amount of money such as this, so much can be invested into communities, revitalizing them, and kick starting our transformation to truly ‘green’ living, as well as obtaining a successful efficient form of renewable energy. A great deal of things need to be done here on Earth to ensure the safety of our only home before we go out into space, like a bunch of unprepared cowboys. Nothing may happen on 2012, just like Y2K. It is really important that we do not lose our composure. We only have one home and we all share it, I can’t believe selfishness and the crookedness of priorities could ever make it to this extreme.
Resources
"Spanish venture aims to build space hotel But will Galactic Suite go into orbit by2012 as promised?." msnbc.com Technology & Science Space msn, 10 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/20216344/>.
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