18-07-09 Who Owns the Moon? The Galactic Government vs. the UN

On July 20,1969,astronauts stepped onto the moon and planted an American flag—not to claim the moon but simply to commemorate the U.S. role in the first moon landing.Forty years later a Nevada entrepreneur says he owns the moon and that he's interim president of the first known galactic government.Dennis Hope,head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation,has sold real estate on the moon and other planets to about 3.7 million people so far.As his customer base grew,he said,buyers wanted assurances that their property rights would be protected.So Hope started his own government in 2004,which has a ratified constitution,a congress,a unit of currency—even a patent office."We're now a fully realized sovereign nation," Hope said.The trouble is that,legally,nobody can own the moon or anything else in space,for that matter,said Tanja Masson-Zwaan,deputy director of the International Institute of Space Law based in the Netherlands."What Lunar Embassy is doing does not give people buying pieces of paper the right to ownership of the moon," she said.The controversy began in 1980,when Hope registered his claim to the moon with the United Nations.The claim went unanswered,so he figured his rights were secured.To date his company has sold more than 2,500,000 1-acre (0.4-hectare) plots of lunar land,which Hope says are rich in an isotope of helium that has an earthly price tag of about U.S. $125,000 an ounce.Today a deed for a plot,printed with the buyer's name,is selling online for $22.49,plus tax.Legal experts counter that the UN didn't answer because it didn't have to:The moon is unclaimable under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,which was ratified by 98 UN member countries,including the United States.Hope,however,said there's a loophole.The treaty prohibits countries from claiming property in space,but "I filed my claim of ownership as an individual." The fact that he's now claiming his Galactic Government has legal authority over the moon might seem problematic.But Hope said that the fledgling regime isn't a member of the UN and so doesn't have to abide by its laws.Whether Hope can legally own the moon is a matter of interpretation,the space-law institute's Masson-Zwaan noted.Although it's not spelled out,the spirit of the UN treaty is that it applies to governments and their private citizens,which invalidates Hope's claim to the moon and other celestial bodies,she said.But that shouldn't disappoint any prospective moon millionaires.You don't need to own a place to make money on it,Masson-Zwaan said.But you do need a clear legal framework for doing business on the property—something the moon currently lacks