Space Hotels Race To Offer Tourists A Room In The Sky

Several companies are racing to become the first to host guests in space on hotel space stations. "It sounds kind of crazy to us today because it is not a reality yet," said Frank Bunger, founder of U.S. aerospace firm Orion Span, one of the companies vying to take travelers out of this world. "But that's the nature of these things; it sounds crazy until it is normal." Dennis Tito, US multimillionaire became the world’s first space tourist in 2001 when he traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Russian Soyuz rocket for a reported 20 million dollars. A few more people have since followed. Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Boeing are working on ways to open space travel to more people by opening up hotels in space. NASA announced in June that it would allow two citizens a year to stay at the ISS at the cost of 35 thousand dollars per night for up to a month. Currently, space laws deal with exploration and keeping the space weapon-free and there are no concrete laws on hotels or space holidays. "It is difficult now to want to do things in space and get a clear answer from (space law)," said Christopher Johnson, a space law adviser at the Secure World Foundation, a space advocacy group. "For something as advanced as hotels in space, there is no clear guidance."

The law is the biggest hurdle for space hotels right now. All space activity is regulated by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that bans nations from claiming space or celestial bodies. It allows for peaceful exploration and experimentation. Firms would need to get proper authorization from the state where they are incorporated to launch a hotel in space.