Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2018

few years or to allow them to circumnavi- gate the Moon and Mars, or even to deliver passengers down to their surfaces. The curious thing is that even the most am- bitious of these projects are apparently feasible, being able to rely on necessary technologies and skills that exist today. Al- most always when these projects are an- nounced, they share some aspects that leave us perplexed, not to say suspicious: they are generally still on paper and far from the development phase; they have mission start dates surprisingly close and improbable, considering the large number of contingencies that may arise; finally, at least some part of the capital necessary to carry out every aspect of the project is asked directly of the candidate space tourists in the form of deposits. One wonders if behind some of these proj- ects, clearly unattainable in the times and terms that are proposed, there is not the precise intent to scrape together capital and advertise at low cost to simply make money, exploiting interest in a hypotheti- cal mission to the Moon or to Mars. As usual, after a few years the project van- ishes into thin air, and maybe the same de- signers replace it with another one, still unattainable as proposed but equally use- ful for financing and advertising purposes. Some space tourism operators are certainly animated by noble intentions, but so far the announced goals for these companies have yet to be accomplished, even as of late for a project announced several years earlier in this magazine. Who knows? Maybe we will be surprised by the project we present below and, fi- nally, we will welcome a space tourism re- ality as envisaged by the designers. It’s about an orbiting extra luxury hotel, de- G raphical rep- resentation of the internal structure of Au- rora Station, seen from different angles. The envi- ronments are rather cramped, but the addition of other modules will make the holiday of space tourist accommo- dations pleasant enough. [Orion Span]