Out of This World

Leisure travel is poised take a giant leap into the final frontier. A Barcelona-based company plans to launch a line-up of space-based hotels with the first travelers embarking in 2012. The Galactic Suite Project released that 38 guests have already booked spots in the first flight more than four years in advance.

Tourists of a moneyed flavor have already begun to visit the International Space Station and take short space walks, but the luxury resort planned by the Galactic Suite Project promises much more. For $4.46 million guests will be whisked away to an undisclosed island in the Caribbean where they will begin an intensive astronaut boot camp. There they will learn all the tricks to living in space. After 18 weeks, the guests will be ready to blast off for their four day, three night adventure in orbit.

The first few will experience authentic space living and all its weightless joys who will carry with them special cameras to address their planet-bound loved ones and fully record the out-of-this-world experience. Floating 300 miles from earth, the hotel will orbit the earth 15 times per day and introduce guests to 0 to 28,000 kmh in 10 minutes.

The Spanish company was founded in 2007 to create the “Transcendental Experience” that takes guests around the world in 80 minutes. Any concept of day and night will cease to carry any conventional meaning as guests will marvel in a sunrise and sunset every forty-five minutes. Though none of the spacecraft have been constructed, 38 eager pioneers tell us the time to book is now.