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Hilton Studies Feasibility of Space Hotel
Roman writes "Here's an article about Hilton looking into a space hotel. It says they want it to look like the depiction of a Hilton in 2001 and it mentions the 'romantic possibilities of zero gravity.' I'd love to be the first on my block to steal a robe from that baby!" I've been hearing this dream for most of my life. Sure hope it comes true for some of you under-thirties someday, but I've given up hope of seeing space hotels in *my* lifetime.
But how much Velcro is needed on a Zero-G robe?
I wonder why you say this. I'm in my mid-late '30's and have every intention of visiting 'space' before I pass away. We need to remember that in the last generation that lifespans have effectively been extended ~8-10% or more. Who's to say that that isn't going to continue?
I for one am looking forward to living a long, long time barring any significant eco/nuclear/alien-induced catastrophe.
I hope we can seriously talk about sex here, without flamebait and the like. But sex in space is sure to be damn awkward. In fact, in contrast to the Hilton's dreamy, idealistic Press release, I'd imagine the reality of the situation would be extremely funny. As most astronauts can tell you, you basically have to re-learn many of your muscle reflexes for operating in zero-g. Good sexual techniques in 1G are difficult enough to learn- and other worst case scenarios in space could get pretty darn nasty. So I think any hope of first time couples going up to enjoy total freedom in love is more of a PR pipe dream for Hilton than anything else. Living in space isn't something to do for a cheap thrill. It's going to require creating an entirely new "culture of physical manner" that takes advantage of the new possibilities and deals with some of the problems.
AFAIK, prolonged stay in zero g enviroments requires daily exercise to keep walking muscles etc etc fit..so that we can walk when we get back to earth. I suppose the hotel staff would have to work in shifts, be paid extra and have loads of life insurance.
And i'm still waiting for the space vehicle that makes trips to and fro to such a hotel viable.
PS: Isn't this gonna cost a heck of alot for even an overnight stay? and would they charge you by hours, days ?
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
But we haven't reached any of the achievements in 2001:aSO so far (the moon is an empty rock for instance) so I doubt we'll see spave hotels in 2001
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"To create an apple pie from scratch, you first must create the universe." -Carl Sagan flifson@csdotuctdotacdotza
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"To create an apple pie from scratch,
you first must create the universe."
I won't catch a hot air balloon to the Space Hotel until they can guarantee me that breathing that imported Martial air is as safe as apple pie. (not the communist freeze-dried kind)
2014 -- Construction of Hilton Orbiter Hotel begins,
by assembling and converting the giant Shuttle tanks
which had previously been allowed to fall back to
Earth.
http://www.gsreport.com/articles/art000072.html
There was a news story some months ago about he being involved in a plan with Hilton. Can't find any URLs, but apparently he has had ties to them for a while, hence the 2001 reference.
It's funny when you look at some of the logos in 2001. Pan-Am was the mega airline back then, but it went bankrupt. AT & T (the logo on the space phone) is still trotting along. Can't remember other merchandising tie-ins.
Apparently, unlike today's movies which get paid to include product placement, rumor has it that Kubrick had to *pay* the corporations to include their logos and add a respectable touch.
L.
Sure lifespan has been increasing at that 10% rate for the last dicennia, but how about quality of life? You have to be fit for space travel. How 'bout hospitals over there?
Wait a sec! A space home for the elderly!
Ivo
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
... could be hazardous to your health in zero G. The jizz leaves your penis at 120MPH and will richochet around the ship at high speeds, possibly putting someone's eye out.
Yes, but will the view be any good? Who is this Anonymous Coward guy, and where does he get the time to post all those messages? ;-)
Oh yeah, sex in space should be great. If you're in to elastic harnesses and inflatable tubes. There's been a supposed NASA document about sex in zero g floating around the web for a while now - click here. It seems to be a reasonable discussion of the topic, but of course its unverified. True or not, its pretty damn funny.
On the face of things, it sounds like a good idea. I know I'd sure like to spend a week or two up in space. But here are a few reasons why I believe it will never happen:
1) Safety: astronauts have to go through intensive training on how to handle themselves in zero-G. The average tourist can't afford to take off enough time from work to learn how to behave in zero-G.
2) Cost: Only the extremely rich will be able to afford it. And among the ones who can afford it, only a few will actually go, and even fewer will enjoy it.
3) References to "romantic possibilities" aside, sex in zero-G would just not be all that feasible or even desirable -- Newton's three laws of motion come to mind (hint: intertia and equal and opposite reactions).
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
This is a nonfiction book, written by an astronaut, describing all the minutiae of living on a space station. It deals with showering, shaving, sleeping, etc. There's a detailed explanation, with diagrams, of the space toilet. Nominally a kid's book, it doesn't say anything about sex. But it shows one of the station-beds, which looks something like a combination sleeping-bag and hammock. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to use in the obvious way.
- Seth Finkelstein
It's simple. We're running five hours different from your time. It's not as late as it seems. Just look at the timestamp on the messages compared to your wall clock.
I must admit .. I have been thinking about this a while .. and something that keeps cropping up if the effect zero-G has on the body ( depending on the lenght of time in zero-G ) and the question that has been hounding me .. is this ..
... and are the hotels really leable for it ?
... I'm not english but nature ;P
How long will it take for people that have been to space hotels to start suing the space hotels for possible defects due to time spent in zero-G
mind the spelling
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
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I remember reading a quote by the founder (or owner /me is a bit sketchy on the details) of Hilton who said that if the cost of getting payload would drop under x per kilo/lbs (don't remember the price, something like $10) they would build a space hotel. This was something like 10-15 years ago.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
Theres a huge amount of rubbish floating around just outside earth, usually travelling at 2-4 km per sec. I saw a 1 gram plastic pellet hit a mock up satellite at 5km per sec... The satellite was basically vaporised. Something as big as a hotel WILL get hit by rubbish and basically wasted imho.
No matter how long I live I wont be paying one of those hotels a visit. Or at least not until after the first disaster or two.
This story is funny given the comments in "Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator" about "Mr Hilton" wanting to put a space hotel up in space to rival the US's official program. :)
IIRC, Lancelot R. Gillgrass, President at the time was not happy
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I think there's a more serious problem they need to overcome before they can build a hotel in space.
Without gravity to hold the end of the toilet roll down, the little folded point the maids carefully create would undo itself. They'll need to develop some sort of tissue origami retaining clip to hold it in place, or find another way to fold the end that will stay put in zero-g. If they have to retrain all the maids for a new folding method, costs could become prohibitative.
Perhaps the toilet roll manufacturers could develop rolls with V shaped perforations so the shape is done for you?
PigPog.
Anybody else got some ideas?
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Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
Interesting. Still, imagine that in the future, people go on vacation to earth? Maybe people are living in a weightless enviroment, and exercise 8 hours a day, while working and living their lives. How do you think that being on Earth would feel? Heavy? Possibly. Unusual? Certainly. People would have the same problems (ie. how to make love, how to move around).
Well, this address by President Hilton discusses the company's looking at space...in 1967. No $/kilo mentioned.
Imagine a zero-G water park...fountain jets, water balls floating around, coriolis fountains, sheets of water sweeping across broadside, people surfing a rotating fountain...and oversize foot fins for flapping at the air...
That being said, what WOULD make for a successful honeymoon suite in a zero-g environment ????
The first addition would be, for lack of better words, an Un-Chastity belt. Picture a belt, coated with fuzzy velcro, to which elastic straps can be attached to as the lovers would see fit.
A second suggestion might be a "love room": a small, spherical room with softly-padded walls, and a plethora of soft handgrips and foot anchors. This, of course, would be for couples and small groups. For larger groups, a long, padded tube might be more suitable, or a large room with loose webbing strung throughout. Brisk, warm airflow through either room is a necessity, if for no other reason than to clear bodily fluids from the atmosphere.
Mind you, this is from L-5/Space Settlement stuff I read in the late 1970's, perhaps there are some more technologically advanced ways to proceed. . .
Come back in 100 years, it might be practical. The cost per lb to orbit is way too high, and the prices/lb to orbit will only fall by a factor of 10 with the next Gen shuttle. For everybody else, it'll take a bigger fall in prices for a per lb to orbit price which we can all afford. Oh, by the way; by then, prices will have gone up. Remember those $5000 cars in the 60s and 70s; now they are $25000 avg. So, by no means will the price fall for the per lb to orbit.
Not to be one to throw water on the parade, but if you just want to wax eloquent on the possibilites on space sex...go ahead...but the whole idea is a Hilton pipe dream.
Let's suppose we have a nice space hotel. What can you do there? Maybe look at the view and spend your time trying to figure out how to eat, drink and visit the bathroom. After a while you just float there bored to death trying not to hit other people's sweat, spits and other garbage.
So let's eliminate the zero-G-problems by spinning the thing around to create some kind of gravity. Well, we miss the view and spend a holiday at a dull tube with even less to do.
But hey! If they sell tax-free booze, at least the Finns will line up ;-)
Well, guess what, romance may be fun, but what would happen to a developing fetus in space? Tadpoles tend to have legs on their heads and arms on their backs and internal organs.. well.. not internal. Scientists have concluded that there is no reason to believe a human fetus will fare any better. I think this may have also been tried with creatures such as mice and other small furries, but I'm not sure.
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Now that is at today's space technology. Sometime I guess there will be something better. I think their best bet would be to shoot for a hotel on the Moon. Might not be as far fetched at the other. At least there is some gravity on the moon. Dodging someones sweat drops would not be a daily chore on the moon.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
I seem to recall that on the Apollo missions, and to a lesser extent the Gemini missions, NASA discovered a potentially serious problem with cosmic rays. Many of the early astronauts were reporting seeing "white streaks" when they closed their eyes along with bright bursts of color and light. After some investigation, NASA discovered that the light was from cosmic rays (?) passing through the eyeballs of the astronauts and momentarily becoming visible. With further investigation, NASA discovered microscopic craters and divots in the helmets and equipment of the early capsules. It seemed that while the cosmic rays were passing through the spacecraft and the astronauts, they were interacting with the matter they came into contact with.
:)
NASA's next concern was obvious. What health risks are involved here? The answer was revealed in experiments conducted during the latter part of the Apollo program and it wasn't very comforting. When the cosmic rays came into contact with normal cellular tissue, they caused immediate decay (ruptured cell walls, DNA damage, etc.) Even more frightening were the neurological effects. When a cosmic ray hit a neuron, the neuron died. While cellular damage can heal itself, a dead neuron is dead forever. A full battery of tests on the astronauts showed slight decreases in memory, reflexes, high motor functions, and even personality changes. The effects weren't serious, but they were there.
For obvious reasons none of this has ever been given much media coverage. By the latter part of the Apollo program, public support for manned space travel was already waning and a public admission that the astronauts were in danger was the last thing NASA wanted to deal with. The problem here is, those astronauts were up for what? Maybe two weeks? What kind of exposure would a staff on a permanent space station see? In order to keep a station like this in orbit for any appreciable amount of time, its orbit would have to be well outside of the Earths sphere of protection (the Mercury astronauts didn't have a problem because they didn't get high enough). What kind of liablility suits would a hotel be facing by exposing employees to this kind of danger? Hell, what kind of suits would they face from customers?!?! Would you take a vacation in space if you knew that brain damage might result?
Disclaimer: I am working solely from memory here, and it's been many years since I read the NASA papers on this. I also haven't seen any recent data on this topic from the shuttle or Mir, just the original Apollo findings. If I improperly stated any points don't flame me, correct me
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Instant drowning. Once the water sphere surrounded you, I don't think you'd be able to get out.
But then, I've never experimented with a big mass of water in space, so I could be outrageously wrong.
What a decadent waste. The energy used to carry out recreational space travel and 'space hotels' would be better left for future generations to heat their homes and cook their food. If/when man comes up with renewable sources of energy, then maybe we should look into things like this.
Unfortunately, big money will beat out common sense on this one, no doubt.
Have the Russians ever had a couple on Mir for some time? Given that the Russians have the lead in accommodating people in space for the longest periods of time, I would be very surprised to hear that they have tried nothing about sex in space. They have done extensive experimentation on almost all aspects of life in space, this must have definitely been tested by the Russians.
It is difficult to believe that nothing ever happened, if they had ever had a man and a woman on Mir for something like 90 days.
With all due respect for Russian technology, given the pathetic shape of Mir after the squeeze in their space program funding; it should have been difficult to do it on Mir without breaking anything onboard. Perhaps it was the reason for the main computer crashing often.
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A better idea is something based on the transhab, an inflatable large structure that can be customized beforehand. (By inflatable, think of inflating a baloon with 1ft thick kevlar walls.)
Of course, while NASA might be convinced to launch this thing with the shuttle, it probably won't want to supply/ferry passengers to this station. So, the earliest pre-dependcy will be private commercial passenger launch capability to a reasonably high orbit. Right now, we don't have that capability. Now, eventually we will get passenger launch, but I would't start seriously considering creating a hotel until that is proven.
and what about that after sex cigarette... Sorry no smoking... DAMN!! Makes me wonder if anyone has developed a way to continue our bad habits in space??? A space suit with a smoke vent.. hehe :) Or a suit with a docking station for ur partner??? I am gonna be rich.....
If anyone can find a link to the story, or if you have a copy of the Wall Street Journal, it's on Page B1, bottom left.
Sorry if I burst any bubbles here!
Not to burst any bubbles, but who's going to address the growing issue of space-junk? Not to mention high velocity particles, cosmic rays and solar wind? I doubt that Hilton, or any other commercial venture is willing to build sufficent shielding and or "clean up" orbital debris. Solar flares are a big issue. If they address those issues then I think they have a shot.
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
This article brings the posibility of an zero-gravity sex chamber. The last frontier in sexual relations.
I don't care how old me and my wife get, We goin' and we trying it out :) (Wink)
Why on earth (no pun intended) would tourists want to spend a vacation without gravity? Sure, we geeks would enjoy it, and most people would probably enjoy the novelty of it very briefly, but do they really think ridiculously wealthy travelers are going to want to suck their dinner through a straw and sleep in a harness?
If they're serious about this they're going to have to provide artificial gravity. The kind of people who could afford to do this are the kind of people who can't stand to stay in less than a 5-star hotel - they're not interested in being uncomfortable.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
In the early 60's, Hilton sent some "stock" certificates for a hotel on the moon. They were for 100 shares, and looked like official stocks. This was playing off the excitement of the space program in the '60s. I had the "certificate" in my toy safe (I was a small kid then), thinking one day I could cash in. I lost the certificate. It would be amusing to have today.
by the Master of Children's Fiction, Roald Dahl. Read it. That's all I've got to say. It is finally a reality.
There were IBM logos in the movie as well. Some of the computers shown on the moon were IBM.
After the movie, rampant speculation ensued as to whether HAL was a hidden reference to IBM (just substitute the preceeding letters). Clarke denied it, saying HAL stood for Heuristic ALgorithmic (sounds like a stretch). He even poked fun at the controversy in the novel 2010, noting how the rumor spread and people still didn't believe it stood for "heuristic.."
Wired had a good cover story on HAL's b'day in 1997. I think there was also a symposium at UIUC, where he was "invented by Dr. Chandra".
anyway, enough rambling.
What idiots! Don't they know that by building a Space Hotel they're just ASKING for invasion by Vermicious Knids?
I'm certain I've see this before - oh yeah! Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, by Roald Dahl. They went up to a Hilton space hotel.
BEWARE THE VICIOUS KNIDS!!!!!!
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
The char[]=HAL;while(char x != '\0'){ printf("%c", x+1); } thing was widely speculated upon.
Another interesting coincidence though, is with the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" sequence and the Pink Floyd song "Echoes" from the Meddle album.
Start the song just as the title comes up, and the changes in the song coincide with the changes in the movie. Then the song and movie ends at exactly the same time.
When there are flyovers of alien terrain there are wind and squealing sounds that seem incredibly appropriate.
Interesting lyric: "I am you and you are me." Later on Dave Bowman looks at himself.
It was a lot of fun to watch 5 times over. It'd be interesting to have a DVD with that as an alternate soundtrack.
Maybe I should get a DVD-RAM drive
When I was 13 i though "y2k will be future, cars will be changed by starships then people like me will live on moon" and something like that. They're late.
vote with a bullet!
i doubt this proposal is going to go anywhere...chemical rockets just dont have any lifting power and cost too much for the kind of payloads involved. unless we start using nuclear rockets or nuclear based fuel systems it isnt going to go anywhere at all. BTW, laser or microwave plasma propulsion is getting somewhere, with the ability to use ground based nuke reactors for power (& safety) with the vehicle using the plasma generated as lift wihtout actually carrying any internal fuel...much safer than pulse nuke based systems.
There was actually a conversation on the mezzanine level of the Plaza at Defcon 6, (by the payphones, anyone remember?) that involved, among other things, the possibility of a buckyfuck. All you need is a large number of (bisexual?) individuals and a suitably-large zero-G chamber. Linking together in 3 dimensions really expands the possibilities FAR beyond a simple circle-jerk and the like.
(sorry about AC.. but I'm not sure I want this forever linked to my searchable online historical self)
I think the real problem would be how you breathe, when the air is full of big and small drops of water.
BTW, a fountain is pretty hard to imagine in zero g.