Genesis I, an inflatable spacecraft designed to test technology for a future space hotel is to be launched from Russia on Wednesday by Bigelow Aerospace.

Genesis I is one-third the size of a proposed space hotel that is based on an abandoned NASA concept for an inflatable space station called TransHab.

Bigelow hopes to build the 330-cubic-meter space hotel by 2012. But the lack of a low-cost vehicle to ferry people to and from the hotel remains a big obstacle. Bigelow has offered a $50 million prize for the first privately funded launch vehicle that could carry humans to a Bigelow space station.