Las Vegas Moon hotel casino aims to be world's largest spherical building
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With Space X, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic sending paying pundits into orbit, the last nine months have seen several giant leaps made for Space Tourism.
Closer to home, an impressively themed resort is aiming to capture a bit of the space race magic right here on terra firma.
Installing a giant, moon-shaped hotel in the middle of the Las Vegas strip it is hoped the Moon World Resort could be a budget alternative to a ticket with Virgin Galactic.
"12 people have been, 7 billion want to go" is the extraplanetary pitch.
The spherical 224-metre circumference lunar hotel is an ambitious enterprise from Canadian design company MOON World Resorts. Estimates to build their moon-shot resort is somewhere in the ballpark of $5billion.
Or, around a fifth the cost of Nasa's Apollo programme.
For that investment, the structure would be the second-highest on the skyline, and the "world's largest spherical structure" founder Michael R Henderson tells the Herald.
Within the loony design is space for 4000 rooms, a 'crater cafe', casino and a space-themed thrill ride. This ride is designed to emulate the experience of taking a 'moon buggy' around craters of the moon, and has already been priced at $730 a go.
Plans for a conference centre have also been included around a life-sized model spaceship, to give events a little star appeal.
"Moon World Resorts Inc. is a Canadian based Architectural Design and Intellectual Property Licensor. It will licence four luxury, unique MOON Destination Resorts around the world," says Henderson. There are currently conversations for a constellation of resorts in Asia, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates, Henderson said.
However, he says the Las Vegas resort will be the most likely to get off the ground.
While the project has been frequently written off as a 'pie in the sky', Henderson has spent two decades developing the Moon World Resorts.
Originally planned to break ground in Coachella, California in 2016 the plan was pulled at the last minute.
At the time Hilton Palm Springs general manager, Aftab Dada, told local paper The Desert Sun that the Moon World Resort was "impossible", adding "if there was a word to supersede impossible, I'd use that".
"California was simply an option under brief consideration," said Henderson. "The specific area tourism authority did not want large scale projects and therefore our project was clearly not a good fit."
However across the border in Nevada, the Las Vegas city were far more open to ambitious mega projects.
"In our view, it's the State with the most progressive and professional planning authority, plus Nevada is not fearful of large scale hospitality projects, indeed it welcomes them," he said.
If given the green light, the project has an ambitious 48 month timeframe.
Mock-ups of the resort were depicted on land recently bought by Wynn from the Australian-based Crown Resorts. Henderson says there is currently a way forward on the Las Vegas skyline as the entertainment capital begins planning its post-Covid future.
"From a scale perspective, yes MOON is large; however, it is similar in scale to many developments in Las Vegas."
The resort would be worth 10 million annual visits to the city, according to MWR's estimates.
