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Will a Hotelier With a Passion for Zero Gravity Take Us to Outer Space?

It's looking more likely all the time that space tourism will be led by private industry, not slow-moving NASA. So who better to get the infrastructure going than a hotel man?

The November issue of Wired magazine has an feature story on Robert Bigelow, billionaire founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain. Turns out he is a bit of a space nut, living in Nevada and owning a chunk of land where UFOs have been sighted. He has been pouring his fortune into Bigelow Aerospace, a company that is setting up innovative space stations that inflate in orbit instead of having to launch in pieces.

You won't find the story online, unfortunately. Despite the magazine's name, most Wired stories can only be found in old fashioned print on ink. The big takeaway though is that space hotels are not first on the list in terms of projects for the stations. First of all, there's not that much money in it. Tenants looking to do science experiments and zero-gravity manufacturing are going to pony up a lot more money than zillionaires who want to brag they ordered room service while gazing down at the Earth.

Once Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos gets a space shuttle for tourists going, however, Bigelow Aerospace's modules can be configured to suit any purpose. So later we could see hotel suites--but definitely not Budget Suites.

Related Stories:
· Bigelow Aerospace [Official Site]
· Space Hotels [HotelChatter]
· Space Travel/Tourism [Jaunted]