The orbital hotel all looked very whizzy on the home page. Just like something out of the Star Trek of my formative years or the Star Wars which came later (complete with all the cuddly robots which I find so tiresome). A company apparently staffed up by all kinds of serious people from places like NASA and JPL - people who are looking for maybe $10bn to start to build something of the sort illustrated, or maybe something just a tad smaller. While according to the rather sceptical reference 2, they have so far raised $1m by crowdfunding. Maybe the serious people, the private equity outfits and the sovereign wealth funds are not rushing in with the readies. Maybe even Branson is not going to go for this one: he might be both a space but and a speed nut, but he has worked hard over the years to avoid tax men and other regulators, and does not intend to do anything as silly as this as he approaches his dotage. Maybe when he gets there.
Apparently there have been a number of speculations on similar lines over the years, all falling by the wayside at some point or other.
The website at reference 1 looks a bit thin to be punting for $10bn, but I was amused by the shopping tab. You might not be able to go into orbit quite yet, but you can buy the sweat top. Maybe that part of the operation is given over to some online shopping specialist who can deliver your online shopping experience from their computers - rather in the way that traditional fish finger manufacturers can deliver their frozen fingers in the livery of any supermarket chain you care to mention.
All brought to my attention by a correspondent.
PS: later on in the day, I wondered whether the whole thing was not an elaborate spoof. But poking around a bit more, the amount of stuff turned up by Bing makes this seem a bit unlikely.
References
Reference 1: https://orbitalassembly.com/.
Reference 2: The enduring fantasy of space hotels - A.J. Mackenzie, The Space Review - 2021
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