You can now reserve a hotel room on the Moon for $250,000 - Ars Technica

A night on the Moon just inched closer to reality. GRU Space has opened priority reservations for future lunar hotel stays, inviting deposits from $250,000 to $1 million and targeting the first guest trips in about six years.

The startup’s vision: develop a chain of increasingly capable off-world habitats, culminating in a grand hotel inspired by San Francisco’s Palace of the Fine Arts. It’s an audacious plan for a company that, as of late 2025, had a very small team, but GRU Space has secured seed funding from Y Combinator and is set to enter its program to refine the business and raise capital.

Who’s behind it? Founder Skyler Chan, a recent UC Berkeley graduate in electrical engineering and computer science, previously interned at Tesla on vehicle software and helped build a NASA-funded 3D printer that flew to space. Chan’s thesis: beyond government and billionaire-backed efforts, the Moon needs a true commercial customer—tourists—to catalyze sustainable development.

Roadmap at a glance:

• 2029 – Mission 1: A 10 kg payload rides a commercial lunar lander to demo a small inflatable structure and convert lunar regolith into ‘Moon bricks’ using geopolymers.
• Mission 2: A larger inflatable is deployed into a lunar pit to scale in-situ resource utilization and habitat tech.
• 2032 – First lunar hotel: An inflatable module designed to host up to four guests at a time.
• ‘Mission 4’: A Palace of the Fine Arts–style structure built from Moon bricks for a more permanent, elegant stay.

Why a hotel if Starship exists? GRU Space sees SpaceX as the transport layer—the ‘FedEx’ to the Moon—while it focuses on building destinations and infrastructure. The company argues that long-term progress requires real off-world habitation, not just living aboard the ship that gets you there.

Big picture: While the concept is undeniably ambitious, the team believes lunar tourism is the most straightforward long-term business on the Moon—an unforgettable destination powered by practical steps: inflatable habitats first, resource utilization second, and permanent structures last.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/you-can-now-reserve-a-hotel-room-on-the-moon-for-250000/