Buy a land on the Moon- Who is being fooled?

From Apes to Men, power and possession over a territory is an integral part of life and it’ll continue to be so. We file lawsuits, wage wars, and sometimes deception may do the work. The land is where the wealth is, from food to buildings, you name it, the land bears it. When the colonial era made our men fight over foreign lands, the post-colonial race forced them to lift their heads up and thus they aimed for the moon and far.

Land lords or Moon Lords?

The surface area of the moon is around 9.5 billion acres which is a bit less than the whole Asian continent. An average distance of 384,400 km from the earth, made it impossible for any country to have a reign over the moon. But that didn’t prevent people from claiming ownership of it. The first recorded one was from the Jürgens family who claims the moon as a gift received from the Prussian emperor in the year 1756. In 1936, Dean Lindsay held a claim on all the celestial bodies as her property. After then several claims were made on these innocent pieces of gas and dust by many men. But the most interesting claim is the one made by Dennis hope.

Will you believe that all you need is 20$ to buy an acre of land on the moon? Well, Dennis Hope made it possible. In an interview given to The New York Times in 2013, he said

“In 1980 I was going through a divorce and hadn’t worked in a year…..I was looking for ways to make me happy……..and when I looked out the window, I saw the moon and thought that there is a lot of property”

Dennis Hope

Of course, there is a lot of property, but how could he say it belongs to him? Article II of the UN space treaty, 1967, states that no nation can claim any celestial body as its own. But it fails to mention the ownership of them by any individual or organization. This is where Dennis makes his point. Out of the blue, he started claiming the moon as his property and challenged the UN for any objection on his claim. As no response was received from the UN, it gave him an additional point to promote his claim. Since then he had been selling parts of the moon to the public through his company Lunar embassy. It seems that he was the first person to start an online platform for selling Extraterrestrial plots. His website calls himself as “The man who owns the moon” and “The Only and Original moon land seller with a filed claim”. In the same interview, Dennis can be heard saying that he had sold around 600 million acres of moon till 2013.

When you google- “buy land on the moon”, it is not just Dennis who showed up. We can find several different websites like Lunar Registry, Moon estates, Lunar Land, and so on, each of them calling themselves as the only legal entity to own the moon. They offer several different locations of the moon at different prices with the spot close to the Apollo 11 landing site (Sea of Tranquility) being the Premium one. But it didn’t stop there. It is not only the moon that is being sold but also planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Io(a moon of Jupiter). Apart from this, some of them even have ‘Name a star’ package where you can name any random star and get your deed with its location specified in space.

Devil in the detail

Some of these companies themselves make their legibility a question with their deeds. When you buy land on any of these bodies from the so-called owners, all you get is a deed with your name written on it. It also specifies the exact location of your property on the corresponding celestial object. But these deeds most of the time, come with something like “Novel gift” written on it, which permits those papers to be projected as nothing more than a memorable gift if things were to take serious turns in the future.

We may think that businesses like these, after being so blatant about their ownership, wouldn’t be able to sell more than mere 10 pieces of land. But their prices and the product they market has made these companies some of the favorite shops for celebrities. Former US Presidents like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter were said to have bought land on the moon. Bollywood celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, late actor Sushant Singh Rajput were also said to own one. But apart from them, there are also some common people who had bought these lands and are hopeful of moving when space tourism becomes affordable, or at least for their children.

Coming back to these deeds, they don’t just permit you to build structures on those lands but also let you utilize the minerals found in there. Some of these companies give you rights over minerals situated within 5 km below your piece of land on the moon. When it comes to minerals, the most interesting part is the reserve of Helium-3 that can be found there. Helium-3 being extremely rare to be found on earth, can be extracted from the moon for running Helium fusion reactors if they were to get ready in the future, providing way for cleaner energy sources.

When we look at these websites, all of them stress about the loophole in Article II of the space treaty 1967. But none of them speaks about the Article VI of the same treaty, which says

“The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty”

Article VI, The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, UN

As it clearly mentions that any private or government organization requires proper Authorization of the corresponding countries, it is evident how much authorized these Extraterrestrial Real estate firms are. Even if fantasy companies like these were to be approved by the government, it is a big question which one of these sellers are going to be recognized as the legal entity, given the number of companies and individuals who will be claiming ownership over the same piece of land. But if all you want is a Moon Deed to decorate your Instagram feed, go for it. At least it’ll give you some follows for sure.

-Vivek Karunakaran

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DIVE IN DEEP

The solar wind throws out a lot of Helium-3 into space but they don’t make it to the earth’s surface as our magnetic field is strong enough to stop most of it, thus making it extremely rare to be found. As the moon is free from an atmosphere like earth’s, it’s surface (lunar regolith) is estimated to be filled with around 1.1 million tonnes of Helium-3 at a depth of a few meters itself. All helium-3 used in our industries is produced from the radioactive decay of tritium, given its very low natural abundance and very high cost. Thus the Helium-3 currently being used are nothing but the by-products produced during the maintenance of Nuclear Warheads. Unlike the Deuterium-Tritium Fusion which is hard to harvest, Aneutronic fusion can use this Helium-3 isotope and release only charged particles that are much easier to harvest.

References

• Extraterrestrial Real estate
• Outer space treaty of 1967 to know why you can’t buy a land on the moon
• Claim over the moon-since 250 years
• Indian Man Who Owns Plot on Moon Sees His Dream Coming True with Chandrayaan-2 Success
• The New York Times- Man who sells the moon

Still interested to book a plot? Have a look at “Moon In Our Cam & The Craters We Spotted“. Maybe you will get to know where to look at

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