Lunar Hotel

[TomKalbfus]

Some developments at SpaceX has made this a little closer to reality.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120712-where-is-hiltons-lunar-hotel

"

Though it wasn’t Conrad’s idea he certainly didn’t discourage the idea of a hotel on the Moon. The March 1963 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine ran a long and glowing profile on Conrad Hilton as the hard-nosed businessman who understood what people wanted and would stop at nothing to give it to them. Though not a quote from “Connie” himself, the article nonetheless ends with a space age promise from the writer: “it won’t be very long before our astronauts land on the Moon and immediately behind them will be Connie Hilton with his plans for his Lunar Hilton Hotel.”

Those plans began to take off in 1967. Barron, who was then president of Hilton, told the Wall Street Journal that he was planning to cut the ribbon at an opening ceremony for a Lunar Hilton hotel within his lifetime. He described the Lunar Hilton as a 100-room hotel that would be built below the surface. Guests would gather around a piano bar in an observation dome that allowed them to gaze back at earth.

Barron’s desire to build a Hilton on the Moon - whether it was merely clever PR or something more sincere - struck a chord with people all over the world. The hotel group even printed promotional “reservations cards” for customers to reserve a hotel room on the Moon. “In the [Hilton] archive we’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of letters of people writing in to him,” says Dr Young. “They’d seen the picture of the reservation form and they wanted to get their name on there.

"

What do you think? 1967 was the year I was born Elon Musk says he could cut launch costs down to 1% of what they are now. Do you think that is enough to get a Lunar Hotel build? A 100-room hotel built underground sounds about the right size. I people are going to the Moon, they need a place to go to in order to enjoy the low gravity. I'd say it should include a swimming pool, should probably be built on or near the North Pole.

[Maine farmer]

I'm not getting my hopes up.  You and I are the same age, and I feel we were cheated out of a good space program.  We should already have a permanently manned station on the moon, and we should have already started colonies on Mars.  As long as humanity remains bogged down with political strife and violence, it will never happen.  Somehow we have to find the will to get along and get it done.

[TomKalbfus]

It's the Shuttle's fault! Once we had the shuttle, the government had an excuse not to further develop space travel, as they kept on using the same one over and over again, and this sort of reusability wasn't cheap, but the government didn't care. NASA was operating off of a steady budget, the Shuttle was using it share and it wasn't generating any revenue, but again the government didn't care about that because it was not a business. The Shuttle ate up 30 years of progress in space travel, whatever money would have been available to further develop space technologies which might hve been commercially viable, instead went into the launch and maintenance of the fleet of four space shuttles, they worked but were not cost effective, but as the government was not a business and it kept on pulling funds out of taxpayers, it didn't care. The Budget didn't increase sufficiently to develop other manned vehicles, so the shuttle remained. Finally the shuttle was retired and now we see some progress, only SpaceX is doing it!