PAN AM

On Christmas Eve of 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts famously read passages from the Bible from space, which was beamed to rapt audiences on Earth. The powerful moment prompted Juan Trippe, head of Pan American World Airways, to phone ABC-TV with some groundbreaking news of his own: his airline was compiling a list of people interested in moon travel, and had been doing so for quite some time. It is believed that this list was kickstarted in 1964 by Austrian journalist Gerhard Pistor, who doggedly requested a Viennese travel agent to book him a flight to the Moon. The request was forwarded to Pan Am, who compiled the growing list of those interested in visiting somewhere elsewhere from Earth; by the Moon Landing in 1969, there were 25,000 names on the list, and other airlines and holiday magazines seriously began considering lunar travel themselves. However, even if space travel does become affordable to the average person, it wasn't meant to be for Pan Am — the waiting list closed with 93,000 names in 1971, but the carrier company shuttered in 1991, effectively ending the Pan Am moon vacation dream. Source: Air Space Magazine