Reuters reports that Galactic Suite plans to offer citizens the opportunity to travel to space and stay in an orbiting hotel pod starting in 2012. A three-night stay in the The Galactic Suite Space Resort will cost $4.4 million. This price include an 8-week training period on a tropical island in the
Galactic Suite Ltd, set up in 2007, hopes to start its project with a single pod in orbit 450 km (280 miles) above the earth, traveling at 30,000 km per hour, with the capacity to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots.
It will take a day and a half to reach the pod - which Claramunt compared to a mountain retreat, with no staff to greet the traveler.
"When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for 3 days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After 3 days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth," he said.
More than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel and at least 43 people have already reserved.
Virgin Galactic has a competing space tourism project with a spaceport being built on an island in the Caribbean. Construction also began earlier this year on a spaceport in New Mexico called Spaceport America. Virgin will be the anchor tentant for Spaceport America.
