PREVIEW

WORDS BYLINE: Hayley Chamberlain

Billionaires could soon be checking into the ultimate luxury getaway — a hotel on the Moon.

US startup Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU) is plotting to open a lunar hotel for wealthy space tourists, with its first model potentially welcoming guests as early as 2032.

And if you’ve got £750,000 ($1million) to spare, you can already reserve a room.

GRU Space is currently asking hopeful space tourists to pay a £750,000 deposit to secure a five-night stay, which may ultimately cost more than £7.5million ($10million) in total. The firm believes demand will come from ultra-wealthy adventurers eager to experience life beyond Earth.

Its debut hotel will be built on Earth before being delivered to the Moon by a heavy lander. The structure will be inflatable and initially capable of hosting up to four guests for multi-day stays, with rooms offering views of the lunar landscape and Earth hanging in the distance.

Designed to operate for 10 years, the hotel will be equipped with air recycling and oxygen generation systems, water recycling, temperature control, an emergency escape system and a radiation shelter to protect guests during solar storms.

“Designed to operate for 10 years, the hotel offers views of the lunar landscape and Earth, along with envisioned experiences such as surface experiences including moonwalks, driving, golfing, and other activities,” the firm says.

Guests will be able to take part in Moonwalking, rover driving and even rounds of low-gravity golf — activities once limited to astronauts.

GRU Space founder Skyler Chan, 22, a recent graduate from Berkeley in California, sees the hotel as far more than a luxury destination. He believes it represents the first step toward permanent human settlement beyond Earth.

'Humanity's transition to a space-faring species is not a question of if, but when,' he said.

'We live during an inflection point where we can actually become interplanetary before we die. If we succeed, billions of human lives will be born on the Moon and Mars and be able to experience the beauty of lunar and martian life.

'As a kid, I always dreamed of going into space. But this is a very complex problem to solve. It's not just like building a bridge. It's a different gravity environment with different building materials.

'It's such a unique, exciting problem to solve, but if we solve it, that means infinite human lives could be born on the Moon and Mars. We're ushering in a whole new era of like life and culture.

'The hotels are just a start, the economic vessel to make this happen. But once we do, I hope it will lead to a Cambrian explosion of beautiful, exciting things, and the future is gonna be awesome.'

Bosses have also offered a glimpse into far more luxurious quarters planned for the future. Artist renders of the expanded facility show stunning rooms lined with cushioned walls, allowing zero-gravity guests to gently bounce off surfaces.

The company intends to enclose its inflatable habitats with structures made from lunar materials, using bricks and concrete manufactured directly from the Moon’s surface. This would allow GRU Space to increase capacity to ten guests at a time in later versions of the hotel.

Mr Chan hopes the second lunar hotel will be much larger and serve as a stepping stone toward full-scale space colonisation.

'The next trillion-dollar company isn't building an AI agent, it's building the first cities on the Moon and Mars, enabling billions of human lives to be born,' he said.

'The company that harnesses the full energy and resource potential of the solar system will become the most valuable company in human history.'

The firm is backed by investors who have also invested in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and is part of the Nvidia Inception Program. Construction is hoped to begin in 2029, though the project remains subject to regulatory approval.