A California startup has just begun accepting reservations for the world’s first hotel on the Moon, and the prices aren’t cheap. A deposit of ranging from $250,000 to $1 million will secure your seat in a project that won’t begin until 2032. Galactic Resource Utilization Space, also known as GRU Space, began the booking process in mid-January 2026.
GRU Space was founded by 21-year-old Skyler Chan, a recent Berkeley electrical engineering and computer science graduate with connections to Y Combinator, SpaceX, and Anduril. He came up with the idea while working at Tesla and on a NASA-funded 3D printing project that actually went into orbit.
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When you check into this hotel, you’ll be staying in an inflatable habitat that will initially accommodate only four people. The concept is pretty cool, with airtight bladders, strong fabric, micrometeor shielding, and severe temperature and radiation protection. Furthermore, life-support systems ensure that the habitat’s interior is habitable. If you want to do something completely out of the ordinary, you can drive rovers around the surface or play a few holes of lunar golf.
The construction process will be incremental, beginning with Mission 1, which will land on the Moon in 2029 with a small 10 kg cargo to test some of the basic technologies, such as the inflatable design and the conversion of lunar regolith into a durable building material. One year later, in 2030, Mission 2 arrives with a larger rig within a lunar pit to scale up those testing. By 2032, the full hotel will have landed on the Moon using a heavy-lift lander and be ready to welcome guests. Later on, they intend to add a strong outer shell constructed of bricks created on-site from a combination of lunar regolith and geopolymers. The inspiration originated from the Beaux-Arts architecture of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, which is great for protection while also saving a lot of material from having to be carried from Earth.
For Skyler, this hotel represents a practical step toward making off-world living a reality. He believes that space transportation companies will handle the travel, but the destinations will require appropriate lodging. That’s where the hotel comes in, as it creates demand, income, and prepares the way for a variety of additional infrastructure, including highways, warehouses, and bases on the Moon and, eventually, Mars. Tourism is likely the simplest way to get an interplanetary economy off the ground, whether you’re a seasoned space traveler or looking for the ideal honeymoon destination.
Of course, all of this is contingent on a couple other factors falling into place. Launch costs must be reduced, crewed lunar flights must become the norm, rules must be supportive, and infrastructure such as power and communications must evolve. GRU Space’s aim generally aligns with NASA’s goals of having a lunar outpost operational by the end of the decade, albeit GRU Space operates autonomously.
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