In an interesting new direction in travel lodging out of Barcelona, Spain, a company calling itself Galactic Suite has announced plans to open a hotel in space. Of course, the design concept is still a bit sketchy, but it is expected to house a total of three guest suites. Nonetheless, the company says the hotel won't be ready until 2012.

Not only is the new hotel pretty far out there in concept, it is also far out in terms of cost. According to the architects of the hotel, guests would be expected to pay a whopping $4 million to enjoy a three day stay in the hotel.

Before enjoying their stay at the hotel, however, guests will first have to participate in an eight week long training camp. The training, which is supposed to be quite intensive, will take place on a tropical island. After completing the training, they would then ride a private shuttle and head off to orbit.

The architects are still working out a few kinks, however, such as figuring out how to make the bathrooms work properly while in zero gravity. The architects are also trying to figure out how to make it possible for guests to enjoy a favorite hotel activity – sex – while staying in one of the rooms and orbiting through space. Bathing, on the other hand, has been taken care of as guests simply enter a special spa room where cleansing bubbles of water will be floating about.

In addition to enjoying a very unique experience, guests of the Galactic Suite will also be participating in experiments regarding travel in space. Whether or not people will be willing to hand over $4 million in order to participate in this experiment still remains to be seen. According to the company, however, there are about 40,000 people in the world that would be able to afford one of these special hotel stays.

While staying in their suite, guests would have the opportunity to see the sun rise a total of 15 times per day. They would also need to wear special Velcro suits in order to stick themselves to the walls and to crawl around inside their pod rooms. The rooms are shaped like pods because each room needed to be able to fit inside of the rocket, which is then taken into space.

Although Galactic Suite’s venture is definitely interesting, it actually is not the first of its kind. In fact, Bigelow Aerospace, which is located in Nevada, has sent two inflatable prototypes into space. They are also planning to send their first inhabitable module up by 2012.

Another company based in California, Space Island Group, is also working on a space hotel, but they have not announced a potential year for launch. Nonetheless, Galactic Suites has an impressive amount of financial backing. One private donor has provided the company with $3 billion to develop its hotel. In addition, 4Frontiers Corp, which is based in Florida, is providing support as well as Barcelona’s CTAE aerospace center.

Photos from GalacticSuite.com