Quick trip to space: A space hotel and a cookie-shaped planet shard

Romar Fernando

April 14, 2021

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  Photo Credit: PhilStarLife / Associated Press

  Are you getting really sick of life here on Earth? There’s an ongoing pandemic. Some people have no job to sustain their daily lives. On the counterpart, others have the audacity to complain about their daily workload even from home. We are all tired and it seems that we’re all disposed to leave Earth… or the country for now?

  In the recent news, there were certain developments in the outer space that would make you feel fine going out the heavens.

  Well, getting out of Earth might require you to have $50 million to acquire a room in the very first ‘space hotel’ which is set to be launched in 2027.

  This idea was introduced by California-based infrastructure company Orbital Assembly Corp. (OAC) which envisions to “create a space construction company for the design, manufacture and assembly of large structures in space.” It will be called ‘Voyager Space Station’ hotel.

  Our planned orbit and elevation for Voyager Station is 97 deg and 500-550 km. This is a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will reduce thermal stress and allow for almost continuous solar power generation. There, orbit degradation and space debris risk will be nominal. pic.twitter.com/DAIpr6Zp94

  — Orbital Assembly Corporation (@OrbitalOps) February 11, 2021

   

  The construction is set to begin in 2025 after it has reached its target fundraising budget of $1 million. “Our planned orbit and elevation for Voyager Station is 97 deg and 500-550 km. This is a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will reduce thermal stress and allow for almost continuous solar power generation. There, orbit degradation and space debris risk will be nominal,” OAC said in a Twitter post.

  The space hotel will measure 200 meters in diameter and 125,000 square feet spreading across 24 habitation modules. It will be enormously larger than the International Space Station. Comprised of two rings, the inner ring will serve as docking hub, and the outer ring will be the backbone of the structure with habitable modules, solar panels, radiators, and a rail transport system.

  Some specs about Voyager Station:
  11,600 m2 (125,000 sf) of habitable space in modules and access tubes
  200m in overall diameter (ISS is 73m long and 109m wide)
  Estimated mass of 2,418 metric tons (ISS: 419 tons)
  Estimation volume of 51,104 m3 (ISS pressurized volume: 915 m3) pic.twitter.com/iuToy39GW7

  — Orbital Assembly Corporation (@OrbitalOps) February 22, 2021

  The space hotel can accommodate a total of 400 people enjoying lavish hotel rooms, bars, restaurants, and a gym with low gravity where a person can literally flex in outer space. It will be using artificial gravity that will “allow for a permanent in-space workforce to build and maintain large space structures in a healthy environment.”

  OAC is hoping that the National Space Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other private partners shall make themselves “part of this historic project, as we believe it represents a concrete shift away from microgravity on orbit.”

  Another discovery in the outer space is an interstellar object which was happened to be a cookie-shaped planet shard. A study said that it was likely to be a remnant of a Pluto-like world. First, it was known as a visitor which was neither a comet nor an asteroid.

  

  Photo Credit: Associated Press

  It’s named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, in honor of the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it in 2017. Astronomers in the Arizona State University reported that it is 148-foot object that made of frozen nitrogen, the same as the surface of Triton, Pluto and Neptune’s largest moon.

  Alan Jackson and Steven Desch, the study’s authors, think “an impact knocked a chunk off an icy nitrogen-covered planet 500 million years ago and sent the piece tumbling out of its own star system, toward ours. The reddish remnant is believed to be a sliver of its original self, its outer layers evaporated by cosmic radiation and, more recently, the sun.”

  “Everybody is interested in aliens, and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar system would make people think of aliens. But it’s important in science not to jump to conclusions.” Desch said in a statement.

  “It’s now long gone, beyond the orbit of Uranus, more than 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) away — and far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble Space Telescope. As a result, astronomers will need to rely on the original observations and, hopefully, continue to refine their analyses,” Jackson said.

  The studies of Jackson and Desch did not say anything if the Oumuamua can someday be inhabitable. “So maybe Oumuamua was consistent with a cookie when we saw it, but will soon be literally as flat as a pancake,” Desch said. “By the time the object starts leaving our solar system around 2040, the width-to-thickness ratio will have dropped to 10-to-1,” he added.

  So, how is that? These possibilities may not be made available in our lifetime. Well, silver linings!

  When life is hard, the only thing we can do is to deal with it and be victorious in the future.

  Stay safe and sound, Sweetie!

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