Human travel to the Moon is still years away, but a California startup is making plans to host overnight visitors there. GRU Space, founded by 22-year-old entrepreneur Skyler Chan, is taking deposits from $250,000 to $1 million for the yet-to-be-built moon hotel.
“If we settle for extraterrestrial habitats, it will lead to this explosion. We could have billions of human lives possibly born on the Moon and Mars,” Chan told the Observer. He founded GRU last year after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, and trained at Tesla.
The hotel, which the company expects to open in 2032, will initially feature an inflatable structure designed to accommodate up to four guests for multi-day stays. In time, it will transform into a brick structure inspired by the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. With a lot of effort, the GRU says the project could do more than launch space tourism—an industry it sees as vital to sustaining the future lunar ecosystem—and instead lay the foundation for every city on Earth.
Chan founded the GRU with the goal of building the first permanent structure on Earth. His team includes co-founder Kevin Cannon, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, and advisor Robert Lillis, who also serves as associate director of planetary science at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. The startup received seed funding from Y Combinator, joined Nvidia’s Inception Program and counts SpaceX and Anduril among its investors.
GRU’s initial target customers include young adults, repeat spaceflight participants and couples looking to upend their honeymoon plans. While final prices have not been set, the company said the occupancy will cost more than $10 million and requires a $1,000 non-refundable application fee.
The project’s first milestone is scheduled for 2029, when the GRU plans to launch the first lunar mission to assess environmental conditions and begin early construction tests. Two years later, another payment will arrive near the moon hole chosen for protection from radiation and temperatures, where the first development of hotels is aimed at 2032.
Chan acknowledged that the GRU’s timelines are estimates, but argued that ambition is needed to make progress. “We really need to shoot for a realistic moon,” he said.
According to Chan, today’s space industry is dominated by two forces: governments and corporations backed by billionaires. He hopes that space tourism can become a third pillar. “Moon tourism is the first best way to develop the moon’s economy,” he said.
The concept is in line with the government’s broader objectives. Visiting the moon has emerged as a focus of US space policy, with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently outlining the nation’s plans to build a permanent base on the Moon by the end of the decade. NASA wants to “have that opportunity to explore and see the potential of scientific, economic and national security on the moon,” he told CNBC last month.
GRU says it is well-positioned to contribute to those ambitions, with initiatives that go far beyond a single hotel. After completing its shelter, the company plans to build roads, warehouses and other infrastructure—first on the Moon, then Mars. Ultimately, it hopes to reinvest the profits into programs to exploit resources on the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
“If we can understand how resources are used on the Moon and Mars and beyond, that will enable us to break free from Earth, and start interacting with the planets,” Chan said. “Promethean time.”
