Barcelona-based Galactic Suite Ltd is currently building a small, orbiting hotel, which they claim will be open for business in 2012 (a timeline many people doubt). The initial hotel will be a single pod that can house four guests and two astronaut pilots, and will orbit 450 km above the Earth. The current pricetag is three million euros for a three-day stay, but that includes more than transit and a place to rest your weightless head. Guests will also spend eight weeks on a tropical island training for their vacation missions.

Once aboard the pod, guests will travel around the world once every 80 minutes and watch the sun rise and set 15 times a day. And, if they get sick of floating around the pod, guests will be wearing Velcro suits that will allow them to crawl along the walls.

So who is funding all this extraterrestrial fun? It sounds vaguely supervillainous, but Galactic Suite would only say that an anonymous billionaire had funded the project to the tune of $3 billion.

Space hotel says it's on schedule to open in 2012 [Yahoo! News via Reddit]

During World War II, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, fearing an invasion of his country, ordered the construction of roughly 750,000 bunkers throughout Albania. Though some have been destroyed, most of the bunkers remain today, abandoned relics of a disaster that never came.

A handful of the bunkers have, however, been converted for non-military use. At a beach resort in Golem, a plumber managed to turn one of the bunkers into a restaurant. Another serves as a makeshift church. The Concrete Mushrooms project seeks to reclaim the bunkers on a larger scale, turning them into a network of hostels, cafes, and shops, that could attract eco-tourists. According to the proposal, the project could not only boost Albania's economy, it could serve as a happy perversion of Hoxha's original intentions for the bunkers. After all, where the bunkers were once built to protect Albanians from invaders, they could now be used to welcome visitors from abroad.

Concrete Mushrooms [via Inhabitat]

The Cocoon was built by designers Bellemo & Cat as a lightweight structure with minimal impact on the surrounding environs, and was placed in such a way, that, from the inside, it appears the place is resting in the treetops. The Cocoon, which is located in Wye River, Victoria, can be rented for as little as $240 a night, but you'll have to bring your own period furnishings; the Cocoon's interior decorations are decidedly modern.

[Bellemo & Cat via Inhabitat]

The satellite achieved orbit around the Moon in late June, and will be mapping its surface extensively. The image you see above is of the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium, and it's the first image NASA has released from the orbiter.

A release from NASA explains what you're seeing:

"Our first images were taken along the moon's terminator — the dividing line between day and night — making us initially unsure of how they would turn out," said LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe. "Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972.". . . Impact craters feature prominently in both images. Older craters have softened edges, while younger craters appear crisp.

Many more images will be coming from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Also, if you want to dig the Moon even more today, here is one of the original movies made of astronauts landing on the Moon in 1969. Apparently it was long believed lost, and has just now been recovered. (UPDATE: A NASA rep denies that the movie below is real, so enjoy it only as a fiction.)

Happy Independence Day!

Moon photograph via: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University