Travel to the final frontier will become increasingly accessible.
Recognizing this, one company is set to launch holiday campuses around the world where guests will be trained for their first off-world holiday.
the signature is called orbit and to prepare guests for commercial space travel, it plans to offer a unique range of programs, from underwater expeditions to space cooking lessons.
Orbite will have five campuses: Bordeaux (France), Neom (Saudi Arabia), Antarctica, Curacao (Caribbean) and Florida (USA), each of which will offer a different space-themed training experience. All camps will fully open later this year.
An eight-day trip to Antarctica’s South Pole, starting from $215,000/£173,000 per person, will allow guests to take part in a glacier hike and outdoor explorations, as Antarctica’s “remote and extreme environment makes it a unique place to simulate life in space.”
On this trip, guests will stay in a ‘skypod’ in the White Desert Eco Camp. The ‘Sky pods’ are designed to ‘look as if they have been teleported from Mars’ and the camp claims to offer an experience close to ‘feeling like you are off the planet without leaving Earth’.
Meanwhile, a four-night Sea-Space Odyssey in Curacao, costing from $29,500/£23,774, will take guests underwater on three underwater dives to learn about “the demands of off-world missions.” Guests will stay in the Baoase Hotela luxury holiday complex.
In Paris, the ‘Living In Space’ experience, which costs from £19,500/£15,716, will allow guests to dine at the space-themed restaurant. Stellar and tour a biofarm lab to learn how to grow food in space. The trip will also include a lecture on space food and a cooking class at the culinary school. Ducasse School.
Orbite will launch vacation campuses around the world where guests will receive training for their first trip to space. The image above shows Astronaut Orientation participants experiencing weightlessness during a zero-gravity flight guided by Chief Astronaut Trainer Brienna Rommes, who guided them through spaceflight training exercises during an event in 2021.
On Orbite’s voyage to Antarctica, guests will stay in a ‘sky pod’ at the White Desert Echo Camp. The ‘Sky pods’ (pictured above) are designed to ‘look like they have been teleported from Mars’
Company’s ‘Living in Space’ course in Paris will teach guests about space food
Guests who have booked the Astronaut Orientation course (starting at $29,500/£23,768) at Orbite’s upcoming Florida campus will take part in virtual reality spacecraft experiences and try out a ‘microgravity’ aircraft to experience the sensation of weightlessness.
On the final day of the four-night experience, guests will sit inside the cockpit of a spaceship and “will be able to feel the real acceleration forces.”
Astronaut Orientation is led by Orbite Chief Astronaut Instructor Brienna Rommes, who has trained more than 750 commercial astronauts for space travel.
While people must be in “good health” to participate in the programs, the trips are still designed to feel like a “vacation.”
Orbite explains to MailOnline: “Space experiences are luxury holiday trips that integrate elements of space education and experiential learning to provide a fun and engaging introduction to the future of space travel.” The photo above shows accommodation in Antarctica.
Guests will stay at Hotel Baoase (pictured above), a luxury resort, while in Curacao.
Orbite explains to MailOnline: ‘Space experiences are luxury holiday trips that integrate elements of space education and experiential learning to provide a fun and engaging introduction to the future of space travel.
“At the same time, our most rigorous astronaut training programs take place at a five-star resort so that each client feels like they are on a ‘vacation.’
So does Orbite believe space tourism has the potential to go mainstream?
Its founders, Jason Andrews and Nicholas Gaume, certainly think so.
They tell MailOnline: ‘We are in the early days of the industry. As commercial space infrastructure develops further, such as SpaceX’s Starship, the price and frequency of human space travel will improve, allowing more people to experience space at lower overall prices.’