Types of Space Hotel

The hotels themselves will vary greatly - from being quite spartan in the early days, to huge luxury structures at a later date. It's actually surprising that as late as 1997 very few designs for space hotels have ever been published. (cf Shimizu, Ehricke, WATG) This is mainly because those who might be expected to design them haven't expected launch costs to come down far enough to make them possible.

 Luckily it's easy to design basic accommodation in orbit - because it was already done in 1973(!) with the "Skylab" space station. Minimal living facilities require a cylindrical module with air-conditioning, some windows, and a kitchen and bathroom. But zero gravity allows you to build almost any shape and size, in almost any direction.

  So exploiting the full range of possibilities of zero gravity architecture will keep designers happy for decades! There'll also be rotating (and tethered) structures giving artificial gravity.