Geo-stationary Orbit Hotel

remember reading somewhere that Wernher von Braun did
not approve of NASA's method of getting to the Moon with
the Apollo missions because it left no way to return to
the Moon inexpensively on a regular basis.He proposed
building a space-station in low Earth orbit and another
in Geo-stationary orbit. Wow, as much as I would hesitate to disagree with a giant like Von Braun, I'd still expect a station at the Earth-moon L-1 point to make a better way-station than one in GEO. This might have been around the time that Von Braun and others were visualizing space stations with weathermen among the crew observing weather systems on the Earth; failing to anticipate the totally automated weather satellites which would eventually do that job. Sohe might have been thinking of the GEO space station as doing double duty. I'm pretty sure that I'm right about it requiring more delta-V to achieve a circular orbit at the geosynchronous altitude than to get onto that figure-8 trajectory to the moon (much less L-1)because I remember that story about the satellite destined for GEO which never made it due to a malfunction in the upper stage. But they had enough maneuvering propellant in the satellite to gradually get it to whip around the moon and used that to raise the orbit sufficiently. I thought by now there would be
cities on the Moon,that by now I would be able to take
a vacation on the Moon. All through 1999, my sig was "Hey, where's themoonbase, where are the Eagles? What a rip!" Oh well,maybe the Chinese will
get another Space race to the Moon going again. Only problem there is that the Chinese program is an exceedingly slow one. Last launch was two years ago. Next launch is in 2007. A race this ain't, though the Chinese will be the first to agree. One might argue they are leapfrogging to a certain extent (perhaps that they've jumped from Mercury to Gemini in just 2 flights), but this is still a pretty slow-paced program.