Venezuela hopes to offer vacations on the moon

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's president hopes a new space project in the South American country will offer tourists vacations on the moon.

Former paratrooper Hugo Chavez said he met a group of U.S. businessmen last week who proposed building a space shuttle and launch pad in the huge southern plains bordering the river Orinoco.

"Within a hundred years, and maybe less, there will be people taking holidays on the moon," Chavez told reporters.

A failed military coup leader who swept to electoral victory in 1998, Chavez has set about lifting his poverty-stricken countrymen out of the ranks of the Third World with an idiosyncratic "democratic revolution."

One of his pet projects is to develop the deserted southern plains with billions of dollars of state oil earnings.

"If it is viable, this construction plan for space vehicles could coincide with plans for a city and a technology center," Chavez said.

Little-known Texas-based Lone Star Space Access proposed building the shuttle and launch pad in association with the Venezuelan government, according to local media.

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