The future of space research and development is tied to private enterprise – specifically private space stations. Now that government-funded programs have proven basic concepts about getting to and living/working in space, NASA and agencies from other countries will continue to turn many aspects of space station work over to private companies.

The International Space Station (ISS) will be unusable by the end of this decade and at that point NASA and other countries will resort to renting space on privately owned, earth orbiting stations.

NASA is hedging its bets and providing grants to several private companies in hopes of jump starting and accelerating their development of private space stations. No doubt any of these companies will be honored to have NASA as a primary tenant, but they’re setting their sights even higher – literally.

Space Flight Tourism Has Begun

We’ve already broken the public-private barrier with tourist excursions for low-earth, brief or multi-day orbital flights. The Russians have been making their Soyuz vehicle available for ferrying private citizens to the ISS for more than a decade.

Now, in addition to ferrying crews to the ISS for NASA, SpaceX also is using its equipment to provide multi-day orbital flights for private citizens. Late last year, SpaceX hosted four space tourists for a three-day orbiting tour.

Space Destination Tourism

Axiom Space, one of the companies supported by NASA, is planning to rent out the SpaceX vehicle from Elon Musk’s team to transport company clients to an eight-day literal “around the world” orbital flight cruise aboard the ISS. This represents the second phase of the space tourism industry – to deliver space tourists to orbiting modules and stations. We’re there already of course, but these programs are in their infancy.

When the ISS goes out of commission, we’ll see private space stations take up the slack – both for NASA’s important work and for wealthy space tourists’ once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Axiom has a leg up on this venture, as it’s planning to attach a module to the ISS for several years before detaching it to form the basis of its own private space station.

Orbital Vacations

Over time, space station tourists won’t be content to live even for a few days in a lab-like environment – the kind we’re used to seeing on videos from the ISS.

Private, orbiting space stations will be upgraded. They won’t be luxurious at first, but they’ll have slightly upgraded sleeping pods and small common areas for lounging instead of working.

NASA will still have its labs and astronaut quarters on board. The tourists will need to stay in their own area, although some will want to do more than look out the window for days at a time and will volunteer to participate in research after receiving some on-the-ground training before liftoff.

The Next Frontier

The next step in the space tourism progression is to break beyond the Earth orbit and place space facilities in other locations – orbiting the Earth’s moon or on the moon itself.

We’ll also see space vacations and research destinations in non-planet orbiting space.

Supporting Space Commerce

Down the road even further, space workers for commercial ventures will become another category of private citizen astronauts. These workers will be hopping from one private space station to the next as space station entrepreneurs place facilities at ever-more distant waypoints in space. Tasks like asteroid mining will be done by robots, of course, but in some cases, human intervention at the mining location may be needed to keep things progressing. These private space stations will serve as staging areas, regional offices, and warehouses.

Space Highways

It’s not too hard to imagine that eventually, along well-established routes to commercial areas in space and to other planets, we’ll see the emergence of additional space structures – hardly space “stations” anymore – with specific functions. Passing vehicles will dock to resupply, make deliveries, make repairs, refresh crews and passengers, and provide almost the same variety of services you’d expect to see along a U.S. interstate highway.

Even further into the future, we’ll see scheduled flights from earth to the larger space communities and then between those locations, similar to the familiar hub and spoke arrangements used by the world’s airlines today. As we scale these operations, space recreation and tourism will be open to far more of Earth’s citizens.

These flights will be even more necessary when people (originally workers on those remote outposts) choose to remain in space-based facilities indefinitely, purchasing or renting accommodations – maybe as retirement destinations.

Will Space Remain International?

At this time, the U.S., China, India, Russia, the UK, Japan, the UAE and maybe a few other nations have or conceivably could develop the capability to push into space for tourism or commerce.

But who owns space? Will we see any borders or territorial claims? Back in 1960, the United Nations determined that space was truly wide open. No country could lay claim to any areas or create any borders.

Will today and tomorrow’s nations abide by that? This neutrality principle might be tested as structures emerge on the moon and Mars and as we’re able to easily reach areas of space with valuable resource-laden asteroids. We may also come across some entities that come from other parts of the universe who would beg to differ about that jurisdiction of the UN!

Baby Steps So Far Are an Exciting Promise of What’s to Come

With these kinds of futuristic images in mind, it’s easy to see that what’s happened in the past decade and what will take place in the next few years are important steps, but they’re still just baby steps.

What needs to and will happen, though, is that as more and more tourist space flights occur on private vehicles and more and more private residents spend a few days at a time on the ISS and later the private space stations, people and investors will be convinced that futuristic, recreational space travel and residency is no longer science fiction but a legitimate, future personal and business opportunity. The Jetsons won’t seem as far fetched as they did 60 years ago.

In 2022, we’ll see a remarkable surge in this direction with more visitors going to space and to the ISS, along with breakthroughs in how to build and integrate structures in space. As long as we don’t see any major catastrophes (unfortunately, they’re almost inevitable and it’s important we keep them in perspective and learn from them when they happen), we’ll see growing confidence in the viability of recreational space travel.

Ten years from now, even if you’re not ready to book a hotel stay near Mars, you should buy a ticket for an Earth orbit trip or make reservations for a once-in-a-lifetime space station vacation. That’s where you’re going to see the greatest shows off Earth.

When will we see the first space hotel? Some would say we have the prototype right now at the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts working there have their own phone booth-sized sleeping quarters with room for their laptops and other personal items. NASA has announced it would sponsor tourist visits to the ISS where they’ll stay in attached modules currently under design and development.

In fact, though, seven space tourists have already traveled to the ISS for one-to-two-week visits, booked through a U.S. company called Space Adventures, which purchases unused seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. It’s been a decade since the last tourist visit, but a Japanese fashion designer and his photographer have booked a ride for December of this year through that company.

But when we think of space hotels, that’s not really what comes to mind.

Sparking the Imagination

Two years before mankind set foot on the moon, in somewhat of a public relations campaign, Barron Hilton was talking about his Hilton company placing an Orbiter Hilton in the earth’s orbit and a Lunar Hilton on the moon – or at least under the moon’s surface. The plans were long on imagination and short on solutions. Pesky matters related to water, oxygen, and weightlessness in those environments had yet to be fully explored, let alone solved.

But the imagination was the fun part – and the part the public wanted to hear about. Hilton presented sketches of cocktail lounges and bars in his out-of-this-world properties. He described how guest rooms would seem very similar to those in earthbound Hilton properties. The public loved the idea, and many people wrote to the company asking to make a reservation.

From Imagination to Reality

Over the next 50 years, NASA and other national space programs worked steadily to solve those problems related to sustaining life in outer earth orbits. And in the last decade, the private sector companies of space travel pioneers like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard Branson have made major leaps in space transport technology.

Many companies are vying for a piece of the future space tourism industry, promising everything from edge-of-space, sub-orbital flights to extended-stay orbiting hotels.

And in the hotel category, we’re seeing plans for luxurious, modest-sized, four-guest properties like the Aurora Space Station by Orion Span, all the way to the Gateway Foundation’s Voyager Station with room for 400 guests.

The Voyager Station property will have 24 modules rotating slowly like a wheel to provide gravity equivalent to that of the moon – so we can all bounce around like Neil Armstrong and subsequent moonwalkers or so that some of the more athletic can dunk like an NBA All-Star. Orbital Assembly Corporation will handle the space construction for Voyager Station using robots.

Back to Imagination

The images that Barron Hilton put in our minds in 1967 seem far more realizable today as we envision space hotel vacations. Instead of an ISS, think of these space hotels as earth-orbiting cruise ships.

Similar to an ocean cruise experience, the first matter of business for new arrivals at the orbiting hotel will be a safety drill. Attached to the sides of the core of the structure there will be multi-passenger escape ships. Instead of learning how to put on a water flotation device, guests will learn how to quickly step into and zip up their flight suits. Pilots of these escape pods will always be on board, most serving as crewmembers with other duties on the hotel airship.

The interior will be warm and inviting, a far cry from the sterile walls and halls we saw in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, one scene in that movie took place in the lounge of an Orbiter Hilton hotel – a very appropriate and subtle homage to Barron’s vision and PR prowess.

Guests will be able to sign up to don a space suit and be attached to a 10-foot tether near the slower rotating core area of the structure and go for a spacewalk. I don’t think we’ll see skeet shooting – there’s no stern to safely point away from, and a purposeful or accidental errant shot could be disastrous to the entire structure.

Expansive windows will be everywhere – in guest rooms, the dining room, the cocktail lounge, and even the small half-court gymnasium.

The workout facility will be placed at the outer reaches of the spinning structure, where the gravity will be strongest – although still not as strong as on Earth. Treadmills will come with tethers for people who bounce just a little too much in their running gait. Friends will snap pictures of other guests to document weight-lifting feats that would not be possible for them on Earth.

Day and night will essentially be meaningless given the space cruise ship’s continual orbit and the day-night cycles of less than two hours. It will take a visitor one or two 24-hour days of adjustment until they get used to having breakfast while watching a far-off meteor shower and having an “evening” cocktail while watching the sun rise. This Las Vegas-esque sequence could very easily be reversed the next 24-hour day.

What will this vacation cost? If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Early on, just the trip to the orbiting hotel in one of Branson’s, Bezos’, or Musk’s vehicles will likely be in the six figures. However, with further technology breakthroughs and as new economies emerge, you can expect that this entire trip might be more in line with a three-month, first-class sea cruise.

Remarkable innovation and breakthroughs in space transport and construction are making all of this possible. I’m not convinced the Voyager Station will be checking in guests in 2027 like promoters claimed earlier this year, but it’s amazing to realize that this could happen even before the end of the current decade.