Packing for a lunar vacation sounds like the stuff of 1950s science fiction — yet a startup backed by one of the world’s biggest tech companies claims it could welcome guests by 2032, a date that’s uncomfortably close. With a six-year countdown already underway, the project is fueling equal parts excitement and suspicion. Is this the next giant leap in space tourism, or an audacious promise racing far ahead of reality? Read on to discover more about this out-of-this-world undertaking, including what’s being promised, what still doesn’t exist, and why the timeline has critics raising their eyebrows.
Meet the startup aiming to build a hotel on the moon
The moon hotel project is the brainchild of GRU Space, short for Galactic Resource Utilization. Just last week, the company opened reservations for its future moon rooms, marking a bold step toward space tourism. Leading the charge is Skyler Chan, a 22-year-old prodigy who graduated from UC Berkeley with dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science—one year ahead of schedule.
Despite his youth, Chan’s achievements are remarkable. By 16, he had already earned an Air Force pilot license. He went on to write vehicle software at Tesla and even built a NASA-funded 3D printer that made its way to space.
GRU Space has also gained significant credibility in the startup world. The company was accepted into Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s elite incubator that helped launch Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. On top of that, GRU Space has backing from NVIDIA’s accelerator program and investors tied to SpaceX and defense unicorn Anduril. Ambitious? Absolutely—but GRU Space’s credentials suggest they might just have the expertise to reach for the stars.
How much does a stay cost, and when does it open?
GRU Space isn’t holding back when it comes to ambition—or the price tag. Interested guests must first pay a non-refundable $1,000 application fee. If selected, the deposit jumps dramatically: either $250,000 or $1 million, with a 30-day window to cancel. After that, refunds are only possible once the hotel is actually built. And the final room prices? GRU Space warns they “could exceed $10 million.”
The project’s roadmap is equally audacious:
- 2026: Applicant screening begins
- 2027: Private auction for initial reservations
- 2029: First lunar test mission takes off
- 2031: Deployment of hotel modules on the moon
- 2032: Grand opening for guests
Red flags and critics’ concerns
The buzz around GRU Space’s moon hotel has drawn inevitable comparisons to Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture launched by British billionaire Richard Branson. Back in 2005, Branson promised ordinary people could reach space, collecting $200,000 deposits with an initial launch slated for 2007. Yet the schedule slipped year after year while technical setbacks mounted. In 2014, tragedy struck when Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft crashed during testing, killing one pilot. Some early customers received refunds, and it wasn’t until 2021 that Branson himself finally made the journey. Today, Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 per ticket, with a $150,000 deposit ($25,000 non-refundable), and flights barely skim the edge of space for a few minutes before returning.
GRU Space, by contrast, is promising something far more audacious: a multi-day lunar stay. The technical challenge dwarfs suborbital flights, yet the startup has only two full-time employees and six years to pull it off. Critics are skeptical, but Skyler Chan doesn’t shy away from the risk. In the company’s white paper, he openly calls the project a high-stakes gamble, and proudly so. He argues that if GRU Space succeeds, it could mark one of the most impactful events in human history.
Chan’s logic rests on current U.S. space policy. With the Trump administration’s lunar ambitions and NASA’s new leadership under billionaire Jared Isaacman, there’s pressure to establish initial lunar infrastructure before 2030. Chan believes the government won’t have the luxury of time to develop all technologies from scratch and will need to rely on commercial partners—GRU Space hopes to be that partner. As the white paper puts it: “If America must build a lunar base within ten years, there’s no time to invent bespoke government-only technologies from scratch.”
In this context, a $1 million deposit isn’t just a hotel reservation; it’s a seat on a high-stakes gamble aligned with the trajectory of U.S. space policy. So, would you take the leap now—or wait for the risks to become clearer?
Source: TechFlow