A company called GRU Space publicly announced its intention to build a series of increasingly sophisticated habitats on the Moon, culminating in a hotel inspired by the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.
On Monday, the company invited those interested in a berth to put down a deposit of between $250,000 and $1 million, making them eligible for a spot on one of its initial lunar surface missions at least six years from now.
It sounds crazy, right? Finally, it was at the GRU space, in late December, when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, the only full-time employee other than myself. And Chan is, in fact, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
Therefore all this can be dismissed as nonsense. But I must say that I am fond of these types of stories. Chan is completely honest about all this. And despite all the talk about lunar resources, I believe the long-term commercial activity on the Moon will be lunar tourism – it would be an amazing destination.
So when I interviewed Chan, I did so with an open mind.
Who are the customers?
Like many young people, Chan wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up. But along the way, in high school and later college, he became convinced that he could live a more impactful life by enabling not just himself, but everyone to go to space.
Chan said, “I realized that I was born in a time where we can actually become interplanetary, and that’s probably the most impactful thing a person can do with their time.” “So I turned my attention to building the systems and technology needed to enable that future. That’s really what inspired me to go to Berkeley to study electrical engineering and computer science.”
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