Tourism of the Future: Vacation on the Moon

Thrill seekers and tourists with a taste for exclusive destinations could have, in the not too distant future, an unprecedented option: a vacation on the Moon. A California start-up has already put up for sale, for the sum of 1,000 dollars, the possibility of booking a room in a hotel that would be built on the natural satellite of the Earth by 2032, reports Space.com. The company urges its potential customers to pay this symbolic advance to "make history" and become among the first tourists of what is presented as the "first permanent structure beyond Earth".

• A hotel built from lunar soil

The project belongs to the company Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU), founded by Skyler Chan, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. The start-up has launched a room reservation option on its website and published the first details about the architecture of the future hotel. According to GRU, the complex will consist of a series of habitable modules and will be built through an innovative process that involves transforming lunar soil into "durable structures”. Construction work is expected to begin in 2029, after obtaining the necessary permits from international institutions and the space agencies involved. Among the first targeted customers are participants in commercial space flights, but also extremely wealthy couples, willing to take the notion of "honeymoon” to a literally cosmic level.

• Tourism, the engine of a lunar economy

The company's representatives claim that space tourism can play a decisive role in triggering a functional lunar economy. According to GRU's vision, the luxury hotel would represent the first concrete step towards a permanent human presence on the Moon. "We are living at a tipping point where we can actually become an interplanetary species before we die,” said Skyler Chan. "If we succeed, billions of human lives will be born on the Moon and Mars and they will be able to experience the beauty of lunar and Martian life,” added the startup's founder. Chan is 21 and majors in electrical and computer engineering. The idea for the lunar hotel was developed at the Y Combinator startup accelerator, and initial funding was attracted from investors associated with SpaceX and Anduril, a company known for developing autonomous defense systems.

• Private ambitions and national strategy

The GRU's plans intersect with the broader goals of the United States to expand its human presence in space. A permanent base on the Moon is part of the vision promoted by the new NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, with the support of US President Donald Trump. The GRU founder hopes his project will help materialize this strategy, with the company already publishing a "white paper” detailing a roadmap for the progressive expansion of human presence on the Moon - from a luxury hotel to the development of a permanent settlement around it. "I have been obsessed with space since I was a child. I have always wanted to become an astronaut and I feel extremely lucky to be able to turn this passion into my life's work,” Skyler Chan added.

Although the project remains, for now, at the stage of ambitious promise, the launch of reservations shows that space tourism is no longer just a subject of science fiction, but is starting to be treated as a possible business of the future.