moonport n.

a spaceport on the Moon

Usually as a proper name.

  • 1944 W. West Outlaw Queen of Venus in Fantastic Adventures Feb. 12/1 page image Wallace West bibliography

    He studied the charts carefully. The Moonport super had said he would need to make a one-degree correction…. This at least was a lot simpler than blasting off from Earth…before managing to chart a course for the Moon.

  • 1947 W. P. Keasbey Navy Rocket Expected to Soar 200 Miles in Christian Science Monitor 15 Aug. 17

    A number of test rockets are being built for the Navy which will attain a vertical speed of 8,500 feet per second…. A moon rocket traveling at that speed could leave Earthport at, say, 6:30 p.m. on a Monday and arrive at Moonport at noon the following Wednesday.

  • 1950 W. Sheldon The Eyes Are Watching in Amazing Stories July 96/2 page image Walt Sheldon bibliography

    Bell led him…to a brightly lighted bistro labeled the Moonport Bar and Grill…. The place was basically a bar room with tables and booths, but it was done up to represent the popular idea of a moonport. It had weird cardboard cut-out foliage growing here and there. High murals depicted bug-eyed monsters chasing scantily dressed babes among fantastic ferns.

  • 1953 B. Walton Dreadful Therapy in Science Fiction Quarterly Aug. 29/2 page image Bryce Walton bibliography

    They’ll ask me why I wasn’t at the Moonport this morning on schedule.

  • 1965 E. Petaja Million-Mile Hunt in Worlds of If Mar. 86/1 page image Emil Petaja bibliography

    Nobody liked Marsport. Marsport was a cankerous bubble of air on a dead, dead world. Moonport was safe, clean, uncluttered.

  • 1977 H. C. Petley And Earth So Far Away in Galaxy Magazine Aug. 14/2 page image H. C. Petley bibliography

    He was a moonborn child of five when his parents left Moonport Tycho on the first colony ships to Mars.

  • 2009 J. Richards The Darksmith Legacy: The Dust of Ages (Doctor Who) 62 page image Justin Richards bibliography

    Once the main power’s back we can send a signal to Moonport Five and get them to send help.

Research requirements

antedating 1944
Earliest cite

Wallace West, in Fantastic Adventures
Research History

The sense 'a place for launching rockets to the Moon', found in various dictionaries and wordlists, is not science-fictional.

Added to OED3 in 2002 (in the senses 'a place from which rockets are launched to the moon' and 'a landing place for rockets on the moon'), with a first quotation from the New Scientist in 1963.

Last modified 2025-04-22 14:08:58
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.