Russian engineers have announced the ultimate get-away-from-it-all holiday, revealing plans to put a hotel into orbit 200 miles above Earth by 2016. The four-room Hotel in the Heavens would house up to seven guests who would be able to cavort in zero-gravity while watching as our planet turns.

The out-of-this-world experience will not come cheaply, however. Space tourists will have to pay £500,000 to travel on a Soyuz rocket to get to the hotel before stumping up a further £100,000 for a five-day stay.

‘The hotel will be aimed at wealthy individuals and people working for private companies who want to do research in space,’ said Sergei Kostenko, chief executive of Orbital Technologies, which will construct the orbiting guest house. ‘A hotel should be comfortable, and this one will be.’

The news that Russia plans to launch a hotel into outer space is the latest example in a series of extreme holidaymaking projects. As the world accumulates more and more billionaires, entrepreneurs are seeking newer and more demanding ways to provide them with the ultimate in hi-tech thrills. Apart from space hotels, which have also been touted recently by US and European aerospace companies, proposals to fly thrill-seekers on rocket flights to the […]