When the moon hits your eye

Some might call it a pie-in-the-sky idea, but Domino’s says it plans to build a pizzeria on the moon. The company’s Japanese arm outlined its cosmic ambition on a website, moon.dominos.jp, with an artist’s renderings of a two-storey concrete dome containing a kitchen, eat-in space and plantation (staff living quarters and a “play room” with zero-gravity bowling lanes are below the surface). The project, envisioned with the help of well-known Japanese construction firm Maeda Corp., would cost roughly $21 billion—about 240 times Domino’s profits in 2010 (though costs would be offset by using the moon’s mineral deposits to mix the concrete).

In light of that shortfall, and NASA’s recent shutdown of the space shuttle program, the plan is likely nothing more than an elaborate publicity ploy. Domino’s Japan is known for cheeky stunts—last year, it had a flood of applicants for a one-hour pizza delivery job that paid $32,000. But, in a video on the website, Domino’s Japan president Scott K. Oelkers (in a space suit, naturally) assures “fellow earthlings” of his company’s sincerity, saying, “Perhaps you think we’re foolish to take on such a challenge, but we have a dream to deliver our pizza on the moon.”