Space hotel. Conceptual computer artwork of a shuttle docking with a space hotel orbiting Earth. The hotel is constructed from used shuttle fuel tanks, connected together with a central core for docking with. NASA designed their space shuttle to be reusable, with the exception of the fuel tanks that power the shuttle into orbit. The tanks are discarded to fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. However, they could be kept in orbit and fitted out as a hotel. Each fuel tank is the size of a Boeing 747 aircraft.