Earlier this year NASA revealed plans to decommission the International Space Station (ISS), by crashing it into the Pacific Ocean within a decade as part of an effort to make way for private space ventures.
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has already made public its plan for a commercial space station, which will function as an all int one Xero gravity business center.
Now Voyager and Lockheed Martin are working on their own space enterprise named Starlab, and they’ve announced Hilton as the Starlab hotel partner. Hilton will be tasked with designing the sleeping quarters and suites for the astronauts onboard.
According to CNBC, Starlab will feature hospitality suites and sleeping quarters, furthermore Hilton work with Voyager to examine opportunities for marketing the space station. Potentially, this could lead to a space hotel in the making.
Chairman of Voyager, Dylan Taylor, has said that he thinks the hotel chain brings a “unique perspective” to the project because they aren’t “space people” and Hilton will be looking at it with a “fresh set of eyes”.
This is a first of its kind partnership between the space and hospitality sectors.
The first version of the space station is planned to be comprised of three modules. The company then plans on expanding it into “multiple Starlabs”, each purpose-built to serve different markets.
Starlab is scheduled to launch low Earth orbit as early as 2027. Starlab will be one of four private space stations under contract by NASA, including Blue Origin, Axiom Space, and Northrop Grumman.