There is a huckster named Skyler Chan who is raising money from the tech bros in Silicon Valley to build a chain of hotels…on the moon. He has ambitious plans.
Those first two steps are just tests, delivering expandable modules to the moon. However, he is talking about building a habitat on the moon in six years, with even more extravagant plans for the future.
I’m sorry, but this is fucking insane. It’s just a grift to suck money out of techno-optimists who are already unmoored from reality. So why is Ars Technica posting an optimistic review of the idea? It’s not April First.
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.
All of this could therefore be dismissed as a lark. But I must say that I am a sucker for these kinds of stories. Chan is perfectly earnest about all of this. And despite all of the talk about lunar resources, my belief is that the surest 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.
If you’re a sucker for these kinds of stories, you shouldn’t be writing them. Has Ars Technica no editors?
To think that lunar tourism is a hot prospect for the commercial development of the moon is ludicrous. Why would anyone want to go there like it’s a trip to Bali? Popular tourist destinations here on Earth tend to require a large support staff — there are deep infrastructure demands that you don’t see on the vacation brochures, like the small non-luxury houses of the staff, and the buses to transport them to your glamorous accommodations, and an extensive supply source for the gourmet meals. Who builds the more elaborate structure on the right? Why does it look like it has huge glass windows?
Also unreal: he explains that space travel is currently supported on two economic legs, government funding and the largesse of billionaires. He thinks he can provide a third leg by building tourist hotels that will cost people a half-million dollars per night, not including travel expenses. Who’s going to stay there? Your average middle-class college professor?
There is something wrong with people who look at the white paper put out by the promoter and think it is a serious document. I mean, this is their “master plan”.
- Build the first hotel on the Moon. GRU solves off-world surface habitations.
- Build America’s first Moon base (roads, mass drivers, warehouses, physical infrastructure on the Moon).
- Repeat on Mars.
- Once the Overton window increases and this moves from non-consensus to consensus, GRU owns property on the Moon and Mars (i.e., The Hudson’s Bay Company owning Rupert’s Land).
- Use the money to re-invest in resource utilization systems on the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond that are fed into the growing economies and civilizations in space. Reach our final form — Galactic Resource Utilization.
- Humanity reaches Kardashev scale Type III.
Put the comic books away, kid. That’s fantasy from step 1. But hey, Ars Technica promoted it, so that’ll help con some dim-witted venture capitalist out of some cash, which will allow Skyler Chan to live the high life for a while until reality pops his bubble.
You will not be surprised to learn that Chan graduated from college in May, 2025, and that he interned at Tesla.
Here’s a fanciful artist’s imagining of the GRU Hotel.
Artists rendering of a lunar hotel
Why does it have big windows directly to the exterior? Why is it warmly lit like a Thomas Kinkade painting? Why is there a conventional door to the outside?
Why would anyone go in or out of that fucking door, Skyler?
Swimming pool might be a challenge.
Steps 1-4 are basically to spend money.
But step 5 starts with “Use the money…” as if there was some income from steps 1-4. This is not a business plan. It is only a scam plan.
The Age of Lunacy rising. And why not the Moon…Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, et al have now flown into space…sorta. Next stop, Alice, the Moon! Then Mars. We gotta do Mars. Elon wants Mars. And, we want to send Elon to Mars along with some of his best buds. That’s not a scam, that’s a dream. You gotta have a dream. You don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true.
Step 5: https://comb.io/UssjDb.gif
Step 1: get billionaires inside your “moon hotel”
Step 2: “this way to the egress”
@1. rorschach : Actually, a lumnar swimming pool would be aweome.
Think Larry Niven explained why inone of his novels (A Patchwork Girl?)
Also Humajs could actually fly in lunar gravity if memory serves..
Obvs the door ther ewillbe an airlock and given China is seriously looing at landing onthe Moon and beating us to it and sicne alot of SF has looked at idea s for lunar colonisation, its really not that impluasible that we get there.
Arthur C Clarkes First Law applies. As does his second and third..
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
& recall toowhat theysaid about the first Monn landings and even heavier than air craft before they were invented.
I don’t have a problem with that.
If the tech bros want to waste their money on scam lunar hotels, go for it.
Skylar Chan lives well for a few years while all that money is being redistributed to the rest of the economy.
Luxury goods providers need to eat too.
This gives 1950s pulp magazine vibes. Too bad Ray Bradbury is dead, he might have liked the imagery.
.
Meanwhile, real researchers are doing dull but real work to find which ideas might be feasible for resource utilization and habitat building.
Zach Wienersmith (the SMBC webcomic author) did BTW write a popular science type book about what might really work on Mars, I forgot the title.
If you want to read about genuinely good ideas, try “Summa Technologia” written by Stanislaw Lem 1966.
He independently proposed micro-and nanotech, as well as virtual reality.
It only got an English translation a decade ago.
.
And for a bit of humor applied to wild ideas, try “Star Diaries” by the same author.
There is absolutely nothing new about this scam.
It is generic.
I vaguely remembered a lot of libertarian scams involving floating ship cities offshore in international waters. Libertarian paradises with their own libertarian governments.
Here is what Google search has to say, edited for length.
There were at least 4 of them, all of which failed early on.
OK.
Just substitute Lunar Hotel for Freedom Ship or Libertarian Ship Paradise and there you go. Remember to spend that money quickly and Skylar Chan might want to save some for bodyguards and lawyers in case some investors want their money back.
Apparently Chan hasn’t read enough spy novels, or he’d know GRU is the Russian military intelligence service, and used the same abbreviation during the Soviet era.
A Kardashev Type III civilisation is impossible, as it is supposed to be able to capture all the energy the galaxy it’s located in produces. He might as well say Step 6 is flying tourists through cosmic rays so they’ll get superpowers like the Fantastic Four.
I remember a Bazooka Joe comic where two of them were dining at a restaurant on the moon-they didn’t like the restaurant because it had no atmosphere.
A fool and their money are soon parted.
There was another loonytarian settlement planned.
Galt’s Gulch was to be on planet earth in Chile.
The organizers collected $10 million and are wanted by the Chilean police for fraud.
I hope Skylar Chan is taking notes here.
At least the moon doesn’t have police so he isn’t going to be charged by the lunar authorities.
I’m sure there are far more frauds like this but this is enough for one day.
Elon Musk with his Mars fantasy is another obvious one.
GRU is also the name of the mad scientist protagonist of those Minion movies.
“So when I interviewed Chan, I did so with an open mind.”
As Momma always said, “Don’t keep your mind so open that yer brains fall out.”
Dóh! Sur etyped that too quick, too late at night / early morn. Take II – corrected version #6.
.***
@1. rorschach : Actually, a lunar swimming pool would be awesome.
Think Larry Niven explained why in one of his novels – even if it did become a murder scene memory serving. (
AThe Patchwork Girl?*)Also Humans could actually fly in lunar gravity if memory serves..
Obvs the door there will be an airlock and given China is seriously looking at landing on the Moon and beating everyone else to it and since a lot of SF has looked at various ideas for lunar colonisation for ages, its really not that implausible that we get there inthe end and find some way of making it work.
Arthur C Clarkes First Law applies. As does his second and third.
Recall too what they said about the first Moon landings and even heavier than air craft before they were invented. Humans are ingenious enough and determined enough to make it happen. Can’t wait. Hopefully in my lifetime.
Sure are a lot worse ideas and worse things a lotta $$$ gets spent and wasted on that do far less good and more harm.
(E.g. imagine even putting a quarter of the US military budget into a human lunar base instead.. Imagine Musk stopped funding nazism and put that money into funding human luar colonisation..)
.* See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Patchwork_Girl
@11. timgueguen : “Apparently Chan hasn’t read enough spy novels, or he’d know GRU is the Russian military intelligence service, and used the same abbreviation during the Soviet era.”
Huh. I thought it was the Cheka under the Tsars and then the NKVD and then KGB for the Soviet Union oof top of my head.
No, I don’t read many spy novels personally either and so guess I’m probly wrong? Still.
Where are the rotating knives?
i say get a moon base up and running. it’ll be expensive, but billionaires could fund it.
then threaten to drop rocks from the moon onto cities unless the cities pay protection money.
profit!
the moon base should be named “Heinlein Base” and the AI running it should be called “Mike.”