Space the Next Frontier for PayPal

Space architect John Spencer has a grand vision for the future of space travel—one with luxury space yachts and hotels, and dune buggy racing on the moon.

It's all going to happen in the "not too distant future," the founder of the Space Tourism Society told CNET recently.

"The more people who go, the more diversity, the more things you can do—the more they need to buy goods and services," he said. "It's limited to what they can do now because of the cost and limited time on board the space system, but that's going to grow as we have more facilities and more people."

Travel to the final frontier has heated up in the last decade and everybody wants a piece of the action. Billionaires like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Telsa CEO Elon Musk are pouring their resources into space tourism (most of these guys are also sponsoring the Space Tourism Societyto help promote space travel).

As Spencer puts it, the time for the "space renaissance," an uberluxury travel experience, is upon us. And, eventually, people will need a way to pay for it all.

That's where PayPal wants to come in. The tech company is working with Spencer, and organizations like Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), to launch a galactic money transfer initiative in hopes of shaping what spending money in space will look like. Spencer is joining join PayPal, famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and SETI at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., on Thursday to kick off the discussion.

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