At the end of 1998, the BBC reported the interest of Hilton in building a space hotel. These plans involved the use of empty Space Shuttle external tanks, which could without huge problems be kept in orbit for future use.

The recycled tanks, would be fitted with a small engine to prevent them falling into the atmosphere and twelve of them would be joined together to form the space station. The structure would house the luxury hotel that could accommodate 350 guests and 50 staff.

The resulting structure resembles designs proposed by Wernher von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke decades ago. The estimated cost of the Space Hilton endeavor was estimated to be in the order of 6 to 12-billion US$, resulting (according to the Space Island Design Group) in a ticket price of approximately 25.000 US$ for a two-week stay. Although these numbers seem to be quite optimistic, it shows that plans like this require enormous investments.

The German Space Agency (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt, or DLR) came up with less optimistic numbers . They estimated the total cost including operations for a space hotel for 48 guests to be close to 50-billion US$, with ticket prices well over 100,000 US$.

One way of reducing the overall cost could be to use military rockets to transport the materials that are needed to furbish the space hotel. In the course of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between the US and Russia, a variety of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) will have to be destroyed (ie. Minuteman, Peacekeeper, Trident, SS-20). This idea follows the "swords to plowshares" approach and uses these rockets (with payload capabilities of up to a few tons) as cheap means of transportation to LEO.

The benefits of a space hotel realization for the human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit strategy would be a largely increased public interest in space. Furthermore, higher launch rates due to the higher demand in Earth-to-orbit transportation would result in decreased launch costs.

The DLR study also summarized the results of various studies on the price that people are willing to pay for a ticket to space (Figure 4-5 and Figure 4-6).

The majority of the current proposals for space hotels look at the center of the last diagram with launch rates of several to tens of thousands passengers per year. In contrast to this, our precursor mission idea takes into account that there are a few people out there today who can already now afford to go to space (left end of the diagram). Examples can be mentioned of several people that have already seriously considered going into space aboard Mir. In these cases, private funding would have covered the costs of 10 to 15-million US$. Two people who were interested were John Denver and Hans Meiser (a German TV moderator). French and German cosmonauts were allowed to fly to and on Mir for costs of between 20 to 60-million US$. Another example of space tourism would be Sultan Salman Abdel-aziz Al-Saud, a Saudi-Arabian prince and member of the royal family that flew on STS-51-G.

Mission Architecture Overview

For the precursor we therefore suggest that interested parties (like Hilton) buy one of the two retired Spacelabs. The Neurolab mission (STS-90) marked the end of the 25- year long success story of Spacelab.

Today, the two Spacelab modules are essentially standing useless in Germany and the US, although they are still operational. After a refurbishment into living quarters for two to three hotel guests and adaptation to the interface requirements of the International Space Station, it would be launched aboard the Shuttle and docked to the ISS. The hotel guests would pay for two to three month stays and travel aboard the Shuttle as well. The complexity of adding two crew members to a shuttle crew of six is minimal, since these two do nothing but sit and breathe during ascent and docking. With a crew exchange every two to three months, about a dozen guests could reside in the space hotel every year. Tickets would be for sale at prices of the order of 15-million US$, but in order to make space tourism accessible for middle class citizens, lotteries will be organized. The ticket price proposed here is approximately in the order of magnitude of a weekly jackpot of one of the lotteries established today.

Taking the outlined features of this Precursor Mission into account, it can be seen that this mission would significantly increase the public interest in the ISS as well as in space flight in general. At the same time, the parties interested in large space hotel complexes can validate there business plans and thus reduce the risk of such an endeavor.

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