Space Tourist's Handbook

to an orbiting Bigalow Industries Nautilus hotel in
low Earth orbit,then out to another orbiting hotel
out at Geo-synchronous orbit, I agree with most all of your vision of space tourism, but just out of curiosity, what would be the tourist draw of GEO? Touring communication and weather satellites? If you were thinking about a way-station between LEO and the moon, the L-1 point might be a better choice. It's hard to believe, but the delta-V cost for achieving a circular orbit at GEO altitude is actually greater than that needed for a figure-8 free-return-trajectory swing by the moon. Once, I started thinking about the best setup for a repairman charged with repairing satellites in GEO. I soon dropped the idea of a GEO space station (no real launch windows to a specific point on GEO) and decided such a repairman would live in an equatorial LEO space station. Such a station would be protected by the magnetosphere (and so could get by without shielding), would be easier to re-supply from Earth, and there would be launch windows to any specific point on GEO about every 100 minutes. It would be quite a commute, but aerobraking would help out on the homeward leg.