Lunar Hilton

The Lunar Hilton is a proposed hotel on the Moon, which would be operated by the Hilton Hotels company. Rumours of the concept began with a space-themed event held by the company in Chicago in 1958 and the idea was adopted by Barron Hilton in the 1960s. A proposal was made for a 100-room underground hotel on the Moon's surface as well as a 24-room space station. The concept was promoted with reservation cards and mock room keys. The concept was revived in the 1990s with plans drawn up for a 5,000-room hotel and a space station constructed from recycled Space Shuttle fuel tanks. Commentators have speculated that the concept might be more of a public relations campaign than a real plan, though in 2022 the company became involved with the Starlab Space Station project.

1950s through 1970s

The first rumors of a Lunar Hilton began with an August 1958 event at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago.[1] The event featured dancers performing a routine entitled "out of this world" and set in a Hilton hotel on the Moon. At the time the Space Race between the United States and the USSR had just begun: the event came less than a year after the launch of Sputnik 1 and predated the creation of NASA. The event led to reports in the contemporary press that Hilton Hotels were planning to construct a hotel on the Moon. It is not known if Conrad Hilton seriously adopted the idea but a March 1963 profile of him in Cosmopolitan noted "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".

According to Mark Young, curator of the Conrad Hilton archive at the University of Houston, it was his son Barron Hilton who first acted on the idea of a Lunar Hilton. Barron was a keen aviator with piloting experience in planes, gliders, helicopters and hot air balloons and regularly met with astronauts.[2] By 1967, when he was 39 years old and president of the company, he told the Wall Street Journal that he anticipated opening a hotel on the Moon within his lifetime. In the article he described a 100-room hotel below the Moon's surface with an observation dome holding a piano bar from which the Earth could be viewed.

1990s revival

The concept was revived in the late 1990s.[7][8][9] Hilton commissioned British architect Peter Inston to design a 5,000-room hotel on the Moon. The company's president, Peter George, said "One day soon, there will be hotels on the Moon. The Hilton wants to be the first". The company separately became lead sponsor of Space Islands, a planned space station constructed from recycled Space Shuttle fuel tanks and providing a 64-room hotel. Blueprints for the space station were drawn up by Japanese firm Shimzu.[10] Bigelow Aerospace had plans to develop the CSS Skywalker, a space station based upon using B330 modules to act as an orbital hotel.[11]

Impact and future

Commentators have speculated that the Lunar Hilton concept was just a PR campaign rather than firm plans. Conrad Hilton's grandson Steven M. Hilton said, in 2009, the Lunar Hilton was meant to be symbolic of the company's ambitions rather than a firm plan. Hilton Hotels continues to participate in space projects. In October 2022 it joined the Starlab Space Station project as official hotel partner. The intent was that Hilton would assist with the design of the crew areas of Starlab. Previously Hilton became the first hotel company to participate in research on the International Space Station when their chocolate chip cookie became the first food to be baked in space.[12]

The Lunar Hilton concept has had an influence on popular culture. A 1962 episode of The Jetsons, "The Good Little Scouts", briefly shows a Moonhattan Tilton, a reference to the Manhattan Hilton hotel, on the Moon. The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey features a scene in the lounge of a Hilton space hotel and an office marked Hilton Space Station 5 is visible.[13][2]

See also

• First Moon Flights Club – a program to pre-book commercial flights to the Moon