There are sellers so skilled that they are capable of selling the Moon to anyone. It is not in a figurative sense. As NASA works to put astronauts back on the lunar surface with Artemis IIAmerican Dennis Hope has been building a fortune for more than forty years by putting a price on each hectare of the satellite and sending property titles by mail. And the most striking thing is that no one has stopped him from doing so.
Hope came into this business in 1980, when she was going through a divorce and had her account in the red after more than a year of unemployment. As he related in an interview with Vice magazine, he thought he could make some money if he had some property, he looked out the window and it occurred to him that there would be a lot available on the Moon. What came next was not just a hunch: it was a million-dollar operation based on a very particular reading of international law.
The legal vacuum that made it possible. His first step was to go to the library and look for the Outer Space Treaty 1967. What he found was a door ajar: the article 2 of that treaty establishes that the Moon and other celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use or occupation, or by any other means. The treaty placed limits on the appropriation of lunar territories to countries, but did not say anything explicit about the ownership of individuals.
Hope submitted a formal claim of ownership over the Moon, the other eight planets and their moons to the United Nations, explaining his intention to parcel out those spaces and sell the properties to private buyers. In his letter he added that if they had any legal problem, they should let him know. Nobody answered him. So Hope interpreted this administrative silence as an absence of legal opposition, and from there he started his business. According to counted your son to ABCsix million people have already purchased land outside of Earth.
An intergalactic business with luxury clientele. Since then, Hope has sold plots not only of the Moon, but also of Mars, Venus and Mercury. In an interview to the BBCHope claimed that he sold an average of 1,500 properties a day and explained that the way to choose the lots was by closing his eyes and pointing with his index finger at a point on the lunar map. “It’s not very scientific, but it’s fun,” he told the British media.
It is estimated that he has earned about 12 million dollars with this business, which he claims is the only one he has had since 1995. Among his clients are former US presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Hollywood stars and greats. hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott.
The space race reopens the debate. What for decades seemed like a picturesque anecdote has returned to the debate table in light of the reactivation of space programs to the moon. Artemis II has become the first manned mission to leave Earth’s orbit since the Apollo program in 1972, and its objective is to prepare the ground for future missions to the lunar south pole and even Mars.
The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the appropriation of territories on the Moon or other planets, but does not explicitly prohibit extracting their resources, which has generated a legal gray area that was revealed in the 2023 ratification of this treaty, which also covers Hope’s real estate business.
For Kai-Uwe Schrogl, president of the International Space Law Institute, the situation is clear: “There are no legal loopholes. There are only willfully erroneous interpretations of the treaty,” declared to D.W..
Is the Moon for everyone? As and as he explained Juan Manuel de Faramiñán, emeritus professor at the University of Jaén and co-director of the AstroÁndalus Chair of aerospace and astronomical studies at National Geographicin 2020 NASA issued the Artemis Agreementsa document in which the US establishes a set of practical principles to guide cooperation in space exploration between nations.
“It must be considered that the signatory States of the Artemis Agreements are not signatories of the Moon Agreement. I must say, and it is a personal opinion, that the Artemis Agreements have become a shortcut to avoid the idea of the common heritage of humanity and open the spigot so that both States and companies can access the resources of the Moon in accordance with their own interests,” stated Faramiñán.
Old treaties for a new space race. The current legal framework on the ownership of the Moon was born in the middle of the Cold War and was designed for a world of two superpowers. Today there are large private companies with the capacity to reach the Moon without support from the States, new state interests and the discovery of natural resources. like water ice detected on the lunar surface, which could be key for long-duration missions.
He Moon Treaty of 1979which attempted to regulate the exploitation of these resources by establishing that they would be the common heritage of humanity, was never ratified by any of the current great space powers. The result is a system of rules designed for another century, with loopholes that have allowed an individual to sell lunar hectares for decades without legal consequences.
Image | POTPexels (Nicholas Thomas)
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