Pan Am made bookings for moon flights- years before Elon Musk

Longest flight delay ever.
Elon Musk may have promised to make commercial space travel an everyday event with SpaceX, but those with infinite memories will recall the idea being floated many moons ago — while one would-be carrier even handed out IOUs.
Pan Am — the airline considered to be among the best of the world during travel’s so-called Golden Age — reportedly at one point had its sights set far beyond the Idlewild to London run.
3 Pan Am’s program allowed customers to register for moon flights half a century ago. Universal Images Group via Getty Images
At the peak of the late-1960s space race, the flyer promised bookings for future moon flights to a whopping 100,000 people.
At that point, leaving Earth’s orbit was a feat best left to highly-trained astronauts like Neil Armstrong, who touched down on the lunar surface in 1969.
But that didn’t stop Pan Am from issuing 93,000 “first moon flights” club member cards, starting in 1968 — anticipating the day that technology would catch up with dream and demand.
3 Almost 100,000 people were given cards to go to the moon. HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Famed news anchor Walter Cronkite was just one boldfacer on the lucky list, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The year 2000 was given as the possible start date for the trips — but Pan Am went bankrupt nine years before it could make good on its promise.
The zany idea came about in 1964 when Gerhard Pistor, an Austrian journalist, asked a travel agency in Vienna to book him a trip to the moon.
The reporter’s request was eventually forwarded to Pan Am, which recognized the opportunity for a great marketing gimmick.
3 While thought to be a publicity stunt, the moon program was maintained for years. Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Demand to be admitted to “The First Moon Flights Club” was apparently so great, the company, suffering financial hardships in the early 1970s, pulled the plug on new requests.
“The [club] was labeled by many as a publicity stunt,” according to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“But Pan Am representatives maintained well into the 1980s that it was a genuine program, insisting the airline would honor its bookings and that viable commercial space travel was imminent.”
Houston-based Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land an aircraft on the moon, back in early 2024.
Odysseus touched down on the lunar surface on Feb. 22 — and stopped working a week later later, The Post reported earlier.