We may always be on the look-out for the next hot location in which to holiday, but this one really takes the cake – trip to the moon anyone?
OK, so moon travel may be light years away yet (literally) but that hasn’t stopped holidaymakers getting all hot under the collar at the thought of a brand spanking new destination.
More than one in ten people questioned in a new survey carried out by an online travel agent believe that moon travel is a distinct possibility – as soon as 2020.
Almost a quarter of the 2,000 people polled thought space-station resorts would be viable in a mere nine years, but those that can’t wait that long should take comfort in the thought that four per cent of respondents believed time-travel would be possible at some point in the future too, so you may be able to fast-forward a few years.
For all you wannabe moon travellers out there, tycoon Richard Branson is working on it. His Virgin Galactic’s SpaceshipTwo – the world’s first commercial passenger spaceship – has already begun its test flights, and will begin commercial operations as early as next year.
Virgin has already signed up 330 aspiring astronauts, each of whom have paid £133,000 to experience a few minutes of suborbital spaceflight. Maybe those survey respondents aren’t as crazy as we first thought.
Branson’s vision for Virgin Galactic’s future contains space hotels for longer stays in space, as well as shorter sight-seeing tours charged at a cheaper rate. And the hotels are already getting in on it too. Back in 2008, one of the UK’s biggest hotel chains, Premier Inn, snapped up the option to buy a 43,500 square foot site at Area E-5, Quadrant Foxtrot – yes, that’s 43,500 square foot of land – on the moon.
The hotel chain believes that it could be constructing the first hotel on the moon within a mere 20 or so years.
Managing director of Premier Inn’s owner, Whitbread Hotels, Patrick Dempsey, told The Independent newspaper, “Given the pace of space exploration and transportation possibilities beyond earth’s atmosphere, we feel that it is now more feasible than ever to expect travel to and from the moon to become a common occurrence within the next 20-30 years.
“We wanted to steal a march on our rivals,” added Mr Dempsey, who also said that the bold move highlighted the hotel group’s drive to offer customers somewhere to stay “wherever the location”. He’s not kidding.
Premier Inns even went so far as to call in the services of an expert lecturer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, to resolve the problems that would accompany constructing a building on the earth’s surface.
However, if the idea proves not to be quite as feasible as the company thinks, purchasing the option to buy land on the moon will have only set them back £24. If they did decide to go ahead and snap up the land from lunar sales company Moon Estates, it would cost them £1 million – a snip when compared to prime real commercial real estate here on earth.
Check back in a few years to pick up great flight deals to the Moon from www.cheapflights.co.uk.
