2 Space Hotel 'U.S.A.'
Mr Wonka's Great Glass Elevator was not the only thingorbiting the Earth at that
particular time. Two days before, the United States of Americahad successfully launched
its first Space Hotel, a gigantic sausage-shaped capsule no lessthan one thousand feet long.
It was called Space Hotel 'U.S.A.' and it was the marvel¹ of thespace age. It had inside it a
tennis-court, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a children'splayroom and five hundred
luxury bedrooms, each with a private bath. It was fullyair-conditioned. It was also
equipped with a gravity-making machine so that you didn't floatabout inside it. You
walked normally.
This extraordinary object was now speeding round and roundthe earth at a height of 240 miles. Guests were to be takenup and down by a taxi-service of small capsules blasting offfrom Cape² Kennedy every hour on the hour, Mondays toFridays. But as yet there was nobody on board at all, noteven an astronaut. The reason for this was that no one hadreally believed such an enormous thing would ever get off theground without blowing up.
But the launching had been a great success and now that theSpace Hotel was safely in orbit, there was a tremendous hustleand bustle³ to send up the first guests. It was rumoured⁴ thatthe President of the United States himself was going to beamong the first to stay in the hotel, and of course there was amad rush by all sorts of other people across the world tobook rooms. Several kings and queens had cabled the WhiteHouse in Washington for reservations, and a Texas millionairecalled Orson Cart, who was about to marry a Hollywood starletcalled Helen Highwater, was offering one hundred thousanddollars a day for the honeymoon⁵ suite⁶.
But you cannot send guests to an hotel unless there are lotsof people there to look after them, and that explains why therewas yet another interesting object orbiting the earth at thatmoment. This was the large Transport Capsule containing theentire staff for Space Hotel 'U.S.A.' There were managers,assistant managers, desk-clerks, waitresses, bell-boys,chambermaids,

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