oom on Earth. It has been designed for conducting research, not entertainment. However, the first generation of space hotels should offer tourists a much more comfortable experience.
In regard to a concept for a space hotel initially planned by Space Island, such a hotel could offer guests every convenience they might find at a hotel on Earth, and some they might not. The small gravitational pull created by the rotating space city would allow space-tourists and residents to walk around and function normally within the structure. Everything from running water to a recycling plant to medical facilities would be possible. Additionally, space tourists would even be able to take spacewalks.

Many of these companies believe that they have to offer an extremely enjoyable experience in order for passengers to pay thousands, if not millions, of dollars to ride into space. So will space create another separation between the haves and have-nots?

The Most Expensive Vacation

Will space be an exotic retreat reserved for only the wealthy? Or will middle-class folks have a chance to take their families to space? Make no mistake about it, going to space will be the most expensive vacation you ever take. Prices right now are in the tens of millions of dollars. Currently, the only vehicles that can take you into space are the space shuttle and the Russian Soyuz, both of which are terribly inefficient. Each spacecraft requires millions of pounds of fuel to take off into space, which makes them expensive to launch. One pound of payload (有效栽载重) costs about $10,000 to put into Earth's orbit.

NASA and Lockheed Martin are currently developing a single-stage-to-orbit launch space plane, called the Venture Star , that could be launched for about a tenth of what the space shuttle costs to launch. If the Venture Star takes off, the number of people who could afford to take a trip into space would move into the millions.

In 1998, a joint report from NASA and the Space Transportation Associat