Once upon a time, in 1980, an American named Dennis Hope walked into the offices of the San Francisco County Seat and registered a claim for ownership of the Moon’s surface. His justification for this claim? “One can become the legal owner of an extraterrestrial body, if you are the first one that claimed it,” according to Hope’s website. So because Hope was the first person to bother filling out the paperwork, he argues, he therefore gained the right to do whatever he wanted with his 38 million square km (14.6 million square mi) of moondust. For Dennis Hope, that means selling lunar property online for $29.99 per acre.
You might notice some flaws in this argument, even if you’re not an expert in space property law. One major complication is that Hope isn’t even the first person to claim ownership of the Moon: Chilean Jenaro Gajardo Vera registered his own deed for the Moon all the way back in 1954. Almost two decades before that, A. Dean Lindsay had already filed claimed a claim for the Moon and all other extraterrestrial objects— this time with a Pittsburgh Notary Public. And all of these claims were declared invalid by a German man named Martin Juergens, who claims that the Moon was gifted to his ancestor Aul Juergens by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, way back in 1756 as a reward for treating the king’s gout. Naturally, Martin Juergens claims, ownership of our nearest neighbor was passed down through the Juergens family to Martin.1
It’s hard to figure out how seriously these men actually believe their own claims. Certainly no governments recognize them as valid, but that doesn’t appear to bother the claimants much. In the meantime, legal scholars, governments, and private companies are working to shore up the legal framework for property rights in space to prepare for a space mining industry. On the one hand, space mining companies (and their investors) want reassurance that they’ll have the right to sell the fruits of their labor if they make it all the way up there with their pickaxes, and laws like the U.S.’s Space Act of 2015 are designed to provide that reassurance and stimulate the industry. On the other hand, no one wants to export our bloody history of imperialism and territorial conflicts out into space (hence the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s ban on national appropriation of territory on celestial bodies).
Or do they? It’s not like we’ve cured ourselves of land disputes here on Earth. Civilians are dying in Ukraine today thanks to Russia’s latest attempt to expand their own borders. The invasion of Ukraine has no more legal justification than Dennis Hope’s claim on the Moon. The difference is that Putin has control of his nation’s military and a personal willingness to start and maintain a war to gain the territory he wants.
It’s easy to laugh off the harmless Dennis Hopes of the world, but that’s because they have no power to enforce their claims. In the coming generations, as our skies get more crowded, what will happen when companies or governments start to notice that the grass is a little greener in their neighbors’ lunar bases? Hopefully we’ll take this opportunity to try something new when it comes to sharing, respecting, and protecting land that, for now, has no spilled blood on it.
Upcoming Events
I’ll be in Leeds, UK on Saturday, Jan 21 for a panel called “Is It Time for Planet B? A Discussion about Human Exploration and Responsibility”, hosted by NoRCEL’s Blue Earth Project. I’ll be joined by Kathryn Denning, Jack Lissauer, Martin Rees, Anders Sandberg, and Christ Thomas. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi! Otherwise, you can register to watch free online at https://norcel.net/bep/bep2023/.
I’m also really looking forward to this year’s Space Science in Context online conference on Jan 26! I won’t be presenting, but the list of invited speakers and posters looks amaaazing. Registration is free, and open now.
These and similar stories can be found in Virgiliu Pop’s Who Owns the Moons? Extraterrestrial Aspects of Land and Mineral Resources Ownership and his more accessible Unreal Estate: The Men Who Sold the Moon.