Professional Astronauts Wanted for Space Travel Company

Looking for a different kind of holiday? If so, you will be pleased to hear that a Las Vegas hotelier has put plans in motion to start hiring astronauts for the world's first ever space tourism project.

According to Reuters, Bob Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, is busy recruiting professional astronauts to work aboard his space station complex with his intention to provide out-of-the-ordinary space vacations for tourists.

The job description, as reported in Britain's Telegraph includes managing all on-board aspects of personal safety, maintaining the space stations, spacewalks and helping clients with experiments as well as training new astronauts back on Earth.

With President Obama having recently canceled any future trips to the Moon, professional astronauts might be excited at this new job prospect, especially as many of them are expected to lose their jobs when NASA's shuttle fleet retires at the end of the year.

Having made his fortune from a cheap motel company, Budget Suites of America, Bigelow has a whole host of space projects up his entrepreneurial sleeve, including having a cruise ship carry 100 passengers on a trip around the moon. It's an exciting prospect but with a ticket expected to cost between $50,000 and $90,000, we wonder how many vacation seekers will swap their bikinis for a space suits? Only time will tell.

Photo by SWP Moblog via Flickr.