Voyager CEO Says Lunar Base Plans Could Enable Moon Living By 2030

Living on the Moon might become a reality sooner than we expected, with scientists laying out a roadmap to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface by 2030, with the first elements of a base operational as early as 2028. "We'll have humans on the moon by the end of the 2020s, and we'll have some lunar base - it'll probably be an inflatable habitat with some life support," said Voyager's chairman and CEO, Dylan Taylor, while speaking during a panel discussion at CNBC's CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore on Thursday.

Taylor said the shift from Apollo-style visits to a sustained presence is already underway. "Deeper into the 2030s, 2032, 2033, you'll be able to sit on your porch in upstate New York and look at the moon, and there'll be lights on the moon, because there'll be people living and working on the moon," he told the audience.

At a time when several companies, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, are excited about establishing permanent Moon bases, Taylor, on the sidelines of the event, said that the "Space has never been hotter," citing an anticipated "windfall" of US government funding.

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According to what he said, the early lunar base will likely rely on expandable, inflatable habitats - structures that launch compactly and then grow up to 20 times their stowed volume once on the surface.

Voyager recently announced a multi-million-dollar strategic investment in Max Space to accelerate development of that technology. "Expanding human presence beyond low-Earth orbit requires infrastructure that is scalable, resilient, and purpose-built for permanence," Taylor had said when the partnership was announced.

"Max Space was built to solve the hardest problem in lunar exploration: delivering safe, scalable, and permanent human space at an economically viable mass," said Max Space CEO Saleem Miyan. "Together we are building habitats designed not just to reach the moon but to stay there."

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US leadership on building a permanent base on Moon

A recent executive order directs NASA to establish the initial elements of a permanent moon base by 2030. The NASA Authorization Act of 2026 is moving through Congress to fund a Moon outpost "so we can get there before the Chinese" and "dominate the moon, control strategic terrain in space".

SpaceX is "focused on building a self-growing city on the Moon," which Elon Musk said could happen in under 10 years. Blue Origin paused suborbital tourism in January to focus on establishing a "permanent, sustained lunar presence". a6eb

Is it possible to build a base on the Moon?

Experts have largely said yes, it's possible, but it will need advanced life support to handle 250 degrees F days, -300 degrees F nights, radiation and razor-sharp lunar dust.