The first house on the moon, an ambitious space-saving alternative to life on crowded Earth, could cost an out-of-this-world $60 million, according to a new study.
That’s an estimated $320,000 monthly payment for 1,356 square feet of interior space, so if you want to go big, stay home.
The study, conducted by the UK finance site Money.co.uk, used SpaceX’sblastoff weight pricing to estimate what it would cost to bring materials, tools and laborers to the moon to begin the work. It also factored in the costs of new technology that architecture on the moon would require for life support and other factors.
Those would include withstanding the low-gravity conditions, airtight seals and “meteor proof windows.”
The authors also factored in traditional property markups, placed at over 27%, to reach their estimated totals.
Price per acreage was calculated based on the Lunar Registry, a wing of the Luna Society which purports to sell land on the moon. (Purchasers are promised a Full Moon Atlas on CD-ROM.) Although construction costs are astronomical, lunar land is dirt cheap.
Depending on location, costs range from less than $20 an acre to around $130. There's also the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans member nations from claiming off-world sovereignty, so it's not immediately clear how property rights would work.
Additional costs include power, food and water.
A 34-panel solar energy setup would cost around $23,000, while a more luxurious nuclear reactor would add more than $1 billion to the cost.