You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000 (arstechnica.com) 48
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn't it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. [...] The GRU in the company's name, by the way, stands for Galactic Resource Utilization. The long-term vision is to derive resources from the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond to fuel human expansion into space.
If all that sounds audacious and unrealistic, well, it kind of is. But it is not without foundation. GRU Space has already received seed funding from Y Combinator, and it will go through the organization's three-month program early this year. This will help Chan refine his company's product and give him more options to raise money. Regarding his vision, you can read GRU Space's white paper here.
Presently, the company plans to fly its initial "mission" in 2029 as a 10-kg payload on a commercial lunar lander, demonstrating an inflatable structure capability and converting lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers. With its second mission, the company plans to launch a larger inflatable structure into a "lunar pit" to test a scaled-up version of its resource development capabilities.
The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and would be capable of supporting up to four guests at a time. The next iteration beyond this would be the fancier structure, built from Moon bricks, in the style of the Palace of the Fine Arts. "SpaceX is building the FedEx to get us there, right?" Chan said. "But there has to be a destination worthy to stay in. Obviously, there is all kinds of debate around this, and what the future is going to be like. But our conviction is that the fundamental problem we have to solve, to advance humans toward the Moon and Mars, is off-world habitation. We can't keep everyone living on that first ship that sailed to North America, right? We have to build the roads and structures and offices that we live in today."
If all that sounds audacious and unrealistic, well, it kind of is. But it is not without foundation. GRU Space has already received seed funding from Y Combinator, and it will go through the organization's three-month program early this year. This will help Chan refine his company's product and give him more options to raise money. Regarding his vision, you can read GRU Space's white paper here.
Presently, the company plans to fly its initial "mission" in 2029 as a 10-kg payload on a commercial lunar lander, demonstrating an inflatable structure capability and converting lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers. With its second mission, the company plans to launch a larger inflatable structure into a "lunar pit" to test a scaled-up version of its resource development capabilities.
The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and would be capable of supporting up to four guests at a time. The next iteration beyond this would be the fancier structure, built from Moon bricks, in the style of the Palace of the Fine Arts. "SpaceX is building the FedEx to get us there, right?" Chan said. "But there has to be a destination worthy to stay in. Obviously, there is all kinds of debate around this, and what the future is going to be like. But our conviction is that the fundamental problem we have to solve, to advance humans toward the Moon and Mars, is off-world habitation. We can't keep everyone living on that first ship that sailed to North America, right? We have to build the roads and structures and offices that we live in today."
Are there space hookers at the bar? (Score:3)
Because if so I can see Bill Gates paying that.
Re:Are there space hookers at the bar? (Score:4, Funny)
GRU Space
Expect minions instead. Possibly Russian.
Re: (Score:1)
lolz! :)
(For those who don't get the reference, Gru is the protagonist from movie Despicable Me, who wishes to steal the moon..)
Maybe space DOGS instead? (Score:2)
As I commented on Slashdot back in 2005: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
"So, as I see it, launch costs are not a bottleneck. So while lowering launch costs may be useful, by itself
it ultimately has no value without someplace to live in space. And all the innovative studies on space settlement say that space colonies will not be built from materials launched from earth, but rather will be built mainly from materials found in space.
Re: Maybe space DOGS instead? (Score:1)
Disculpe señor. No entiendo cual es la conexion..
Re: Are there space hookers at the bar? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
There's one born every minute (Score:2)
And a lot of them seems to be at Y Combinator.
Bigelow (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Is he related to Deuce Bigelow male gigolo?
Re: Bigelow (Score:2)
Bobby Bigelow is his daddy.
Re: (Score:1)
Space Hotel 2: Electric Bigelow
Guess they are upfront about selling hot air (Score:2)
Re:Guess they are upfront about selling hot air (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it's the old tale about Nasreddin Hodja. The one in which he took a bag of gold from the grand vizier to teach a donkey to speak Arabic in 10 years. When they asked him "what are you going to do in 10 years", he said, "all's fine, in 10 years either the donkey will die, or I will die, or the vizier will die, and until then I have a bag of gold and a good work donkey".
"Building the FedEx to get us there"? (Score:3)
Federal Express should probably start closely examining any large packages this guy sends.
Re: "Building the FedEx to get us there"? (Score:2)
If the guy ever hires that dude that built all his custom furniture from FedEx boxes, then they'll start looking at interplanetary shipments with a keen eye
In space, no one can hear you grift (Score:2)
Partial deposit (Score:4, Informative)
I was surprised by the low amount. It seems like even transporting a person to the moon would cost an order of magnitude more than 250k, and that's before you even start talking about funding the construction of a habitat. Lo and behold:
Your deposit will be applied toward the final price of your reservation once the hotel is ready to accept guests. Final pricing has not yet been determined will likely exceed $10 million.
So, yeah. Not only are you reserving a spot in a "hotel" that isn't expected to exist for at least another 5 years, but the final amount you're asked to cough up could well be ~10-100x more. I guess to some individuals a few hundred thousand dollars is the equivalent to what I lose in the couch cushions, and it is refundable (assuming the company remains solvent), but is the sense of FOMO so bad that the mega rich are willing to toss it at a project so far from realization just for the chance at being first?
Re: Partial deposit (Score:2)
it worked for Elon and the Tesla Roadster.
Well (Score:2)
Irony about Elon aside, the big difference is that, by the time of the first Tesla Roadster,
there has been quite some development of EV [wikipedia.org], so bolting Li-Ion battery and an electrical motor using mostly low-cost off-the-shelf parts to a Lotus glider was completely realistic.
Currently the total experience operating hotels beyond Earth atmosphere is at best described as "limited".
And regarding Tesla Roadsters and Elon: yes, the second iteration is mostly a money extraction scheme.
First i can name my own star (Score:2)
Also available: (Score:3)
Buy them all, collect the set !
This is for the billionaire class, not for you (Score:5, Insightful)
You're funding this by not having affordable healthcare.
1960s throwback (Score:4, Informative)
Pan Am once booked flights to the moon. [wikipedia.org] Except they didn't take money, as it was just a tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt. This, on the other hand, smells like a huge scam.
GRUSpace is the new hotness (Score:2)
KGBSpace is old and busted
Re: (Score:2)
I guess they're all sold out of bridges (Score:2)
nt
Whack jobs - stay the hell away (Score:5, Informative)
"A Type III civilization on the Kardashev Scale is a hypothetical civilization capable of harnessing the energy of its entire galaxy, controlling energy from billions of stars and potentially manipulating phenomena like black holes for power, allowing for galactic-scale travel, colonization, and advanced mega-engineering far beyond current human comprehension, making them appear god-like.
Type 0: Uses energy from its home planet (current humanity).
Type I: Controls all energy of its home planet.
Type II: Harnesses all energy of its home star (e.g., Dyson Sphere).
Type III: Commands the energy of its entire galaxy."
These people are lunatics - pun intended. They'll also never date Olivia Rodrigo... https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
Space Camp (Score:1)
So basically... $10 million to sleep in a tent on the Moon.
no refund for missing your reservation date (Score:3)
Neat! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Send me a million and I will reserve you a room on mars.
Don't pay more! (Score:3)
Check in time (Score:3)
This is a symptom of the stupidity of the world (Score:2)
If you are reserving hotel rooms for $250,000 on the moon, you are stupid.
If you are pre-ordering $90,000 Cybertrucks which you've never seen or test driven, you are stupid.
Heck if you're pre-purchasing games for $90 so you can play them 2 days before the normal global release, I'm sorry, you too are stupid.
GRU? (Score:1)
Well there's almost unlimited money on the market (Score:2)
There are many people to which $250k is just "funny money". It's like those companies selling plots on the moon for $100. Wealth is just to concentrated these days.
In a way it makes sense to have such companies, as they re-distribute wealth again. When they burn investor money, they essentially turn it into wages. It is, in a way, the closest thing to a "trickle down" effect there is. Failing companies liberate money from the ultra-rich.
I hope they know (Score:2)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I've got a much better deal for you (Score:2)
A hotel room on Mars, for half that price! Earliest available dates are January 1, 2125, but you must pay your down payment now. Your reservation is guaranteed or your money back, if facilities are not yet available by that date!
Micrometeorites? (Score:2)
I was hoping to read in the summary how an inflatable deals with micrometeorites.
I'll wait for a subsurface hotel with day trips to the surface during good weather.
Imagine the reviews (Score:2)
This has got to be bogus (Score:2)
It is pretty blatantly obvious that a "vacation in space" would be much better in an orbiting station with a much better view and access to weightlessness for some amusement. Combined with the fact that the orbiting hotel would cost about 1/10 as much to arrive and depart at this idea is so obviously wrong that it has to be a scam.