It now seems that Galactic Suite has revealed new plans to open the very first hotel in space, and they are happy to report that the plans are on schedule. The company says that The Galactic Suite Space Report will be open for business and accepting tourists by 2012.

This news comes on the heels of announcements that an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast has granted the company $3 billion to finance this project. Although it seems that this new hotel will get the go ahead, it’s not going to be a bargain stay. It is said that it will cost about $4.4 million for a three night stay at the out of this world hotel. The price does include an eight week training course on a tropical island before the trip even starts.

Although there are some considerable doubts about the cost and time frame of the project, there have already been about 200 people that have expressed an interest in the trip. 43 of these people have already made reservations to stay once the hotel opens up.

The CEO of Galactic Suite, Xavier Claramunt, says that he thinks that space tourism will become common place. He said that the technology already exists, and it’s quite normal to think that our children could spend a weekend up in space for a great price. Although, this kind of thing could still be about 15 years down the road.

The idea is to have passengers arriving by way of rocket. After about three days the passengers will return to the transport rocket and return down to Earth. Galactic Suite hopes to start this project with a single pod in orbit about 280 miles above the earth that will be traveling about 30,000 km per hour. It would take about a day and a half to get to the suite pod, which can hold four guests and two astronaut pilots. There will be no hotel staff on the pod.