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As Americans prepare to once again attempt to reach the moon – something that hasn’t been done in more than 50 years – one startup company has grand plans to be the first to put a hotel on Earth’s only natural satellite.
GRU Space, a San Francisco-based startup, wants to build the first hotel on the moon by 2032, the company announced in a news release on Jan. 12.
GRU has even started asking potential customers to put down a $1 million deposit to stay at the yet-to-be-completed structure on the moon.
According to the company, the cost to stay in the hotel would be an estimated $416,667 per night. If accomplished, the hotel would be the first ever permanent off-Earth structure built in history, with a capacity to accommodate four guests for several days.
USA TODAY asked GRU how many people had signed up to be one of the company’s first customers but did not get an immediate response.
How will the moon hotel be built? What might it look like?
To build the structure, GRU expects to construct the initial hotel on Earth and ship it to the moon as-is. It will then be inflated on the moon’s surface. The first iteration of the hotel is expected to last 10 years, while the second is expected to last 20. The company expects to begin construction of the first hotel in 2029, pending regulatory approval.
The second iteration will be built using local materials with more capable construction methods, the company said in its white paper.
The hotel will be partially situated in lunar pits to maximize shielding and provide a stable thermal environment, the company said.
The second iteration of the hotel is inspired by the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, which was constructed in a Greco-Roman architectural style. An artistic rendering below shows what the hotel would look like.
GRU Space said it’s interested in hosting “adventurers, repeat private spaceflight participants, and those taking a ‘honeymoon’ to the next level.”
Hotel on the moon could be pie in the sky
Despite GRU’s ambitions, creating a hotel on the lunar surface is not an easy feat. No companies currently send civilians to the moon and GRU is hoping the hotel can be completed in six years. And many questions remain: How will people breathe on the moon? Who will work in the hotel?
While the moon hotel seems unlikely to be reality by 2032, the United States does have ambitions to send humans there again soon.
In December, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to establish initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030 to ensure a sustained American presence in space.
NASA is scheduled to launch its first moon mission in 50 years in the near future. Four astronauts will be part of the Artemis 2 mission that will circumnavigate the moon during a 10-day trip slated for early this year. Though the mission does not include plans for landing on the moon, the mission will help support future moon landings.
GRU Space’s CEO Skyler Chan believes mankind is at “an inflection point where we can actually become interplanetary before we die,” he said in a written statement.
Chan, 22, began the company at 21. He’s managed to attract investors behind SpaceX, Anduril, a U.S. defense technology company, and Nvidia.
“I’ve been obsessed with space since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to become an astronaut, and feel extremely fortunate to be doing my life’s work,” Chan said.
The company says it doesn’t plan to just stop at the lunar hotel. Upon the hotel’s completion, it wants to build roads, warehouses and other physical infrastructure on the moon before repeating the same actions on Mars.
Michelle Del Rey is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at mdelrey@usatoday.com
