Virgin Galactic
In 2007, Genesis II, an experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a space hotel, was successfully sent into orbit by Bigelow Aerospace. Boeing have announced that they will be able to take tourists into space in 5 years.
The Galactic Suite
Virgin Atlantic has announced its intention to begin redeeming tickets on commercial space flights within the next 18 months – by some time in early 2012. In 2009 the Barcelona-based developers of The Galactic Suite Space Resort said their orbiting hotel was on target to accept its first paying guests by 2012.
Today the BBC reported that a Russian company has unveiled an ambitious plan to launch a “cosmic hotel” for wealthy space tourists. Orbital Technologies says its “comfortable” four-room guest house could be in orbit by 2016, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reports. Guests would be ferried to the hotel on a Soyuz shuttle of the type used to transport cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The new hotel would offer greater comforts, according to Sergei Kostenko, chief executive of Orbital Technologies. “Our planned module inside will not remind you of the ISS. A hotel should be comfortable inside, and it will be possible to look at the Earth through large portholes,” he told RIA Novosti.
It is not clear how the “cosmic hotel” would be built, but the company’s website names Energia, Russia’s state-controlled spacecraft manufacturer, as the project’s general contractor. Energia builds the Soyuz capsules and Progress cargo ships which deliver crew and supplies to the ISS.
The k2p blog 