Space Tourism Lifts Off: 2012 Space Resort Launch

Photo via Exclusive Lifestyle. Artist's rendering of the Galactic Suite Space Resort.

You think you'd find the Galactic Suite Space Resort in a cartoon, comic strip or kitschy hotel in Disney World, right? Wrong. Whether you like it or not, it's real, and plans to open its super-future-like doors to paying guests in 2012.

Don't confuse this hotel however, with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic project, which plans to propel tourists into suborbital space at $200,000 a ride. Galactic Suite Ltd, the company behind the resort, has bigger, more "bling" plans in mind--a veritable space playground for the rich and famous.

A three night stay comes at a pretty 4.4 million dollar price tag and begs to question: at what cost for the environment?

Galactic Suite Space Resort Hotel Amenities

I'm sorry but complimentary pillow chocolates and stocked mini-fridges seem so less novel when compared to the Galactic Suite Space Resort's digs. After an eight-week astronaut training course on a Caribbean island, guests will rocket up to space to the Galactic Suite's hotel pod. There, they can play Spidey suiting up in Velcro to crawl around their zero-gravity pod room walls, see the sun rise 15 times a day from a weightless spa, and orbit the planet every 80 minutes.

I have to admit--and I'm sure many of my fellow earth lover's would agree--who wouldn't want a real, live 360 panorama of our mother ship, in all of its awesome-ness? But I also suspect that other earth-concerned citizens are asking this: seriously?

Sustainable Space Tourism?

As it is, I panic when wanderlust gets the better part of me and I find myself jetting off to an exotic locale with only carbon offsets to semi-ease my unsettled mind. I don't think that in good conscience--now, or in the future--I could get on a rocket that goes from 0km/h to 28,000 km/h in ten minutes. Unless it were of course, fueled by clean, fossil-free sources.

Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, is quoted saying, "It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space."

I suppose--if they're not fighting off climate change-related illness, famine, and drought.

Not to be a killjoy or anything...

If you have however heard anything about sustainable space tourism, let me know in the comments below!

::msnbc

More on Space Tourism:
Can Space Tourism Really Be Green?
Is Space Tourism a Good Thing?
Virgin Galactic Unveils the World's Largest All Carbon Composite Aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo