Daily Archives: February 23, 2005

Hotels in Space

Here we go again:

Still, when it comes to grand ambition, the impresarios of the Strip are mere pikers next to Budget Suites owner Robert Bigelow. For his next hotel enterprise, Bigelow is looking beyond the bright lights of Las Vegas—beyond Earth’s atmosphere, in fact. He is actively engaged in an effort to build the planet’s first orbiting space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a night. For its water show, this hotel will have all of Earth’s blue oceans flying past its windows at 17,500 miles an hour. Guests on board the 330-cubic-meter station (about the size of a three-bedroom house) will learn weightless acrobatics, marvel at the ever-changing face of the home planet, and, for half of every 90-minute orbit, gaze deep into a galaxy ablaze with stars.

Well, it sounds great, but I stand by my position that the first hotel in space should be sub-orbital. Stationary, in fact. Okay, the tourists won’t “get” to experience zero-G, but they will have the same great view.

Oh, and I think they could get a night in a sub-orbital airship hotel for about $10,000 per night. Or less. Ironically, unlike Bigelow’s proposal, the airship hotel would be the Budget Suites of space.

via GeekPress

Best high pic.jpgUPDATE FROM STEPHEN:

Here’s the suborbital view that Phil was talking about. This picture was made by JP Aerospace during an April 2004 mission.

JP Aerospace is working toward the creation of a “Dark Sky” Station that would serve as a way station for an “Airship to Orbit” space program (pdf link). Such a way station is necessary because a sturdy airship is needed to navigate in the lower atmosphere and an entirely different kind of airship is needed to complete the journey into orbit.

And it would be an obvious tourist attraction.

Cyborgs

My friend Paul has been one for years. As has Stephen’s father-in-law. And over the weekend, the Blogfather announced that his wife would be joining the ranks of the early-stage human/machine hybrids.

Glenn comments on the cyborgization of America:

Soon, probably within a decade or two, we’ll see such devices becoming common, and multipurpose, and — most importantly — aimed at people who don’t have anything in particular wrong with them. Perhaps a ‘body computer?’ It could measure heart rate, blood chemistry, diet and exercise levels, etc., and export its data to outside devices so that the owner, or a physician, could monitor the owner’s health. Perhaps it could take preemptive action, releasing clotbusting drugs at the onset of a heart attack or stroke, or steroids in the event of an allergy attack, providing on-the-spot first aid for many serious problems. Still more advanced versions could fine-tune things in a variety of ways, until we gradually reach the stage in which our bodies are pervaded with nanodevices that maintain health and repair damage without our even thinking about them.

I’d like one of those now, especially if it could also treat migraine headaches. They’re working on it! They’re already working on vagus-nerve stimulation for epilepsy and depression, and even neural stimulation implants that promote female orgasms. (What, nothing for us guys?*) Since these devices are based on two things — electronics and biological knowledge — that are improving by leaps and bounds, we’re likely to see a lot more of them, and we’re likely to see them become cheap enough, and capable enough, and reliable enough that they’ll attain widespread use. Which I favor, though not everyone will agree.

As we noted yesterday, developments on the biotech/nanotech front promise to make our integration of machine components as unobtrusive as possible. But yesterday’s development raises an interesting question: what do you call a cybernetic organism whose cybernetic components are organic?

Orgcyborgs comes to mind, but maybe its a little clumsy. Perhaps we should reserve the term “cyborg” just for the organic cyborgs, and use the word borg to refer to the old-school mechanical cyborgs.

I’m just free-forming, here. Just kind of opening it up for discussion.

*Well, right, since guys wouldn’t benefit from that at all. What guys need is something really useful — maybe something to make us, I don’t know, more regular. No, not punctual, I mean — criminy, just forget it.