I remember when the flick came out-as a publicity stunt, PanAm airlines was taking reservations on Moon trips. The movie did show the PanAm logo at the space station (in the film).
Now Spirit Airways is plugging the same deal.
Did Pan Am actually take reservations? I imagine the tickets would be collector’s items-are there any around today?
Don’t know about the tickets (I was 3 in '68) but to clarify: The Pan Am logo was not just at the orbiting station, it was the airline/shuttle that brought Floyd from Earth to it. Was also in the sequel 2010 where they even said Pam Am’s new slogan was, “The Sky’s No Longer the Limit!”
Too bad they went bankrupt in 1991…
There’s a discussion on airliners.net: Listen to a real recording of a call made to Pan Am’s reservation number in 1969 for an inquiry for a flight to the moon. In a public ad campaign in 1969 Pan Am actually advertised that they were taking reservations and or inquiries for future flights to the moon.
Apparently the deal predates 2001, according to this article from 1989, back when Pan Am was still around.
QUOTE
Twenty years after man first set foot on the lunar surface, Pan American World Airways has more than 93,000 names on its reservations waiting list for the airline’s first passenger flight to the moon - as yet unscheduled. The first application for commercial lunar travel on Pan Am dates to 1964, when Gerhard Pistor, an Austrian journalist, walked into a Vienna travel agency and asked for a booking on Pan Am’s first flight to the moon.
Pan Am, which pioneered trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic passenger service, received requests from nearly 100,000 passengers before closing the list on March 3, 1971. The remaining names are stored in the airline`s archives and will stay there until “such flights take place,” says Pan Am publicist Elizabeth Manners.
UNQUOTE
Another article from a fortnight later - must have been an anniversary or something - talks about President Bush’s plan to start settling the moon by 2001; wonder how that turned out?
Gerhard Pistor was 51 in 1989 so he’d be 74 this year. Doesn’t seem to have left any trace on the internet otherwise. The internet has a few shots of a supposed reservation card, although whether they’re legit I have no idea.
The original poster is talking about the 1969 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” not the year 2001.
As you no doubt remember, we’ve been colonizing the satellite for the last eleven years, with the proviso not to tell the dumb peo… Uh, never mind…never did hear anymore about it!
(It was an old Steve Martin joke)
And Ashley Pomeroy is talking about it dating to 1964, according to the first paragraph of her quoted text. Obviously just a fun notion to play with in the middle of the Space Race.
I wonder who is holding on to the prospective-reservation list these days?
If they’re anything like this, they are. A friend of mine made a “First Moon Flights” reservation with Pan-Am in the late 1960s; the linked image is the same card as he had (except his had his name on it).
And it is a 1968 movie anyway. I saw it first run in Cinerama.