Written by: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow

In 1980, an unemployed used car salesman from California named Dennis Hope walked into a government office in San Francisco, claiming he wanted to "claim" ownership of the entire moon.

The staff thought he was crazy.

However, after reviewing the legal texts, they found that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty only prohibits nations from claiming ownership of the moon, but it doesn't say anything about individuals. Hope exploited this loophole and wrote a letter to the United Nations stating that the moon was his; the UN did not respond.

Thus, Hope registered a company called "Lunar Embassy" and began selling lunar land. One acre for $20, which came with a gold-embossed deed and a satellite photo.

Forty-five years later, Hope has sold 600 million acres of lunar land, with clients including famous actors like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and reportedly three former U.S. presidents. How much has he made?

$12 million.

This business has been classified by China as "profiteering and madness," and is explicitly prohibited. But in the U.S., Hope remains free, continuing to sell deeds.

Now, a 22-year-old young man says:

Selling land is too low; I want to open a hotel on the moon.

This company is called GRU Space, short for Galactic Resource Utilization, which just opened reservations for future hotel rooms last week.

The founder, Skyler Chan, has dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, graduating a year early in May last year.

We looked through his resume, and it is indeed impressive: he obtained a pilot's license at 16, worked on vehicle software at Tesla, and created a NASA-funded 3D printer that was sent to space.

The company has entered YC (Y Combinator), the most famous startup incubator in Silicon Valley; Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox all emerged from there.

There is also support from NVIDIA's backing program, as well as investors from Elon Musk's SpaceX and military unicorn Anduril.

Sounds impressive, right?

The YC profile clearly states: 2 full-time employees.

Two people are expected to open a hotel on the moon within six years.

Although I can't afford it, out of curiosity, I researched their pricing structure.

The application fee is $1,000, non-refundable. If selected, a deposit of $250,000 or $1 million is required, which can be refunded within 30 days; after that, you can only wait for the hotel to be built to get a refund. The final room price "may exceed $10 million."

The timeline is as follows:

2026 for application screening, 2027 for a private auction, 2029 for the first lunar landing test, 2031 for deploying the hotel module, and 2032 for opening.

This model reminds me of Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson.

Branson is the owner of the Virgin Group, which does everything from airlines to music to cola. In 2005, he announced plans to take ordinary people to space, starting to collect deposits of $200,000 each. At that time, he said the first flight would be in 2007.

Then it was 2008, 2009, 2010…

In 2011, a 75-year-old man named Alan Walton could no longer wait and requested a refund. He said he had already climbed Kilimanjaro, visited the Arctic, and parachuted from Everest; he just needed space, but he was getting old and really couldn't wait any longer.

In 2014, a Virgin Galactic spacecraft crashed during testing, killing one pilot. A group of customers requested refunds and received them.

In 2021, Branson finally went to space himself. Customers sighed in relief, thinking it was finally their turn.

In 2022, an 84-year-old Bulgarian man named Chapadjiev requested a refund. He had paid in 2007 and waited 15 years, being told every year "next year you'll fly." He said his relatives in Bulgaria kept asking him when he would go to space, and he couldn't answer.

Virgin Galactic's ticket price has now risen to $450,000, with a deposit of $150,000, of which $25,000 is non-refundable. Commercial flights have indeed started, but they only go to the edge of space for a few minutes before returning.

GRU Space aims to send you to the moon to stay for a few days. The difficulty is several orders of magnitude greater.

Moreover, Virgin Galactic took 20 years and burned through billions of dollars, with fatalities, to reach this point. GRU Space has only 2 full-time employees and has given itself 6 years.

However, I don't think this is a scam.

The founder of GRU, that 22-year-old Berkeley graduate, stated in the white paper that he knows this is a gamble; he doesn't hide it, and he is proud of it. He said that if successful, it would be the most influential event in human history.

This sounds crazy, but the logic is self-consistent.

The Trump administration aimed to establish a lunar base, and NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who paid for his own trip to space, has stated that preliminary facilities should be built by 2030.

Chan is betting that the government won't have time to develop everything from scratch and must rely on commercial companies. He wants to be the one they rely on.

The project's white paper quotes a line:

"If the U.S. must build a lunar base within ten years, there is no time to invent those peculiar devices exclusive to the government from scratch."

So the $1 million deposit does not buy a hotel room. It buys a ticket to the racetrack, betting on the direction of U.S. space policy.

Finally, a detail.

The company is called GRU, and the end of the white paper states: "It's time to steal the Moon."

It's time to steal the moon.

Gru from "Despicable Me" also wanted to steal the moon. In the end, he didn't succeed but adopted three orphans and became a good father.

I wonder if Skyler Chan has seen that movie.

I also wonder if, six years from now, those who paid the deposit will check into the lunar hotel or, like 84-year-old Chapadjiev, ultimately choose to get a refund.

In any case, the deposit is refundable within 30 days.

The moon is still there; it won't run away.

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