Expanding the Space Industry

A Russian company by the name of Orbital Technologies plans to launch the world's first Commercial Space Station.  They plan for this to be an orbiting hotel that will be open to private citizens, scientists and astronauts.  The space station is expected to be operational by 2016.  Once in space it will be able to hold 7 visitors at once.  There are two main markets that the company anticipates customers from.  The first is space tourism.  It is anticipated that space travel will begin to become popular in the future as a recreational activity.  The other market would be or scientific research, such as medical experimentation and earth observation.  The space station will be built to allow docking with US, European, and Russian space shuttles.