A company called GRU Space has announced its plan to build a series of increasingly complex habitats on the Moon. The final product will be a hotel modeled after San Francisco's Palace of the Fine Arts. Interested customers who are able to pay a deposit ranging from $250,000 to $1 million, will secure a spot on one of GRU Space's initial lunar surface missions within six years.
Skyler Chan, the founder of GRU Space, was inspired by the idea of making an impact by making space travel accessible to everyone. This led him to study electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. Chan has also worked at Tesla and built a NASA-funded 3D printer that went into space.
The name GRU stands for Galactic Resource Utilization. The company's long-term goal is to extract resources from the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond to support human expansion into space. Despite its ambitious nature, this vision isn't entirely far-fetched. GRU Space has already secured seed funding from Y Combinator and will be going through their three-month program early this year.
GRU Space plans to launch its first "mission" in 2029 as a 10kg payload on a commercial lunar lander.
The goal is to demonstrate an inflatable structure capability and convert lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers.
The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and could accommodate up to four guests at a time.
