"The Next Space Race!" Topic

No doubt, some of you may have thought that perhaps we'd be racing the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, or [insert your favorite country here], back to the Moon, or to Mars, but you'd be wrong.

It appears the Americans kicked off the new space race awhile back, when they delivered Pizza Hut pizzas to the International Space Station, back in 2001.

Now, Domino's claims to have a plan to open a restaurant on the Moon to provide fresh pizzas for all those astronauts toiling away on the remote rock, or working in space nearby.

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Be sure to click on the additional concept pictures, to see the internal layout.

I find the claims a bit difficult to support, and am dubious of the profits to be made if they have to build and staff a facility on the Moon, but still, the concept might be good for a terrain feature on your next game table. Heck, it could even be the reason for the scenario, as rivals Pizza Hut and Domino's duke it out for space supremacy on a lonely, barren rock far from home.

I imagine it's a bit more likely that the pizzas will be freeze-dried, and delivered to your nearest microwave oven via standard replenishment missions, since the special delivery charge and wait times will be exhorbitant.

A perfect setup for a supply interdiction mission.

Every pizza will be free 'cause they will never make their 30 minute delivery.

I imagine they will change the terms to 30 hours, or 30 days, for space…..

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, it's Amore!"

So we have Mafia Moon Buggy Wars at all the lunar settlements.

"Every pizza will be free 'cause they will never make their 30 minute delivery."

They gave that up. It promoted unsafe driving. ;P In this case, I imagine some reckless dockings would occur were it still in place.

Just think what it will cost to order a pizza. Take the earth price and add about 3 or 4 zeros to the price. They will have to ship every ingredient to the moon. At least until they can build enough hydroponic farms to grow enough produce, wheat, and herbs. Oh wait I have not even talked about cheese and other toppings.

It is going to be a while till this happens.

Yeah they plan to deliver to the moon, but not to my area go figure that one!

Too late. We can already get Killer Pizza From Mars here in Oceanside, CA…

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I know Barney Pell, who is heading up a private space venture, and is looking at various private enterprises who wish to provide services for space stations and moon-bases (as well as designing a couple of different space vehicles.

I have told him that one of them (his "normal/regular" launch vehicle) should be a SSTO seeing as by the time he gets around to actually building it, the tech will be available for fairly robust propulsion systems (pity that nuclear aero-spikes aren't allowed). But he seems to set on a more traditional mode for the time being.

One of the jokes that Richard Branson and Burt Rutan used to make was that by the time NASA got back to the moon, they would be greeted by a Valet Parcking Attendant from the Hard Rock Cafe, and a Virgin Galactic Mega Store.

There won't be another space race. There isn't the money or the will any more. All that seems to be important is keeping the space station running, satellite delivery/repair and the odd probe to who-knows-where…

…that is until mankind destroys the rest of the world and we need to re-locate…