There was news last month of a company working on plans for a space hotel.

They want to open in 2027. It all sounds very exciting until you read that they have hit their initial fundraising goal of $1 million. One million dollars is a lot in Earth Money but in terms of Space Money, you may as well have $1,000. It’s just not going to get you that far.

(Although space isn’t as far away as you think. I’ve joked that I’m closer to space than any other border. From where I live Washington state, I’m about 320 miles away from Idaho, 133 miles from Oregon and 121 miles from Canada. But space is only 62 miles away!)

Anyway, some company is going to build a space hotel. Within my lifetime, likely. And if it seems safe (or at least safe-ish) and if I had the millions of dollars it will likely require, I know I would deeply deeply like to go.

Regardless of whether these hotel plans come to fruition, it’s interesting to see how more and more civilians are getting to space. A recent lottery got two space fans on board a billionaire’s SpaceX flight. The first private crew to visit space is scheduled for next year. According to the last article, “Between 2001 and 2009, seven private astronauts (spaceflight participants or so-called “space tourists”) launched on eight self-funded trips to the ISS.” It seems pretty likely that in the next eight years way more than seven private astronauts will go to space.

At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that we may never truly overcome the hostility of space.

For the triumphs of the NASA team, this week, Mars is a still a planet solely inhabited by robots, not people.

I think about Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora. It makes it clear—more than just about any novel I’m read—just what the difficulties will be in space travel. It’s about a colonization ship on an interstellar journey but I think it’s entirely possible that some of the same difficulties apply to travel within our solar system as well. (It is also, for my money, one of the most environmentalist novels I’ve ever read.)

We have a lot of challenges ahead of us if we’re going to spend any length of time in space.

A final note on the space theme. Let me recommend the weekly newsletter Orbital Index. It covers space news (and the writer is a reader of The Lattice Trilogy!). As a companion to the sci-fi I read, I’ve enjoyed reading what’s happening in actual space news. It’s worth checking out!