Who Owns the Moon?

According to Gary Larson, the Ty-D-Bol family:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=110&dat=19910510&id=5AxQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o1UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5182,3130952

Russia planted a flag on the Arctic sea floor, do they now own it? can you just lay claim to whatever you want these days? will Elon Musk take Mars?

The same FAA that can't make/issue a rule on UAV's over the US can rule the moon? Typical government.

trust me,uavs wont be making lunar runs with propellers

You're saying they're lunatics?

Hopefully, it will be like Antartica and nations will agree not to fight a war over it -- I expect for the same reason: It's a long ways away and there's little chance of it being profitable in the near term. Time will tell.

We have ALREADY agreed not to fight over (or on, or about) the Moon or any other celestial body:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

From the article in the original Post:

"The United Nations Outer Space treaty, in part, requires countries to authorize and supervise activities of non-government entities that are operating in space, including the moon. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries."

So it looks like the FAA is going to be handed the authority to regulate Lunar-based commerce by companies beholden to American law, or using American resources for launching(1). The Outer Space Treaty forbids 'claiming' celestial bodies for any nation or government, and since 'private' ownership of land(2) requires the consent of the government controlling the land(3), there can be no 'private' claims either. Just like international waters, space belongs to all of Humanity(4)(5).

Notes:

1. Since so many corporations are using mergers, inversions, shell-games, etc to try and claim that they are not beholden to ANY government, the second clause is needed. Engulf & Devour Inc. may be able to claim its home office and tax base to be the Cayman Islands, or that oil rig that calls itself the 'country' of Oceania, to avoid paying US taxes on their profits, but if they want to use Cape Canaveral do launch their equipment to frack the Moon, they're gonna have to play nice with the US. "Our launch pad, our rules."
2. Any TRULY 'private' land ownership would be an attempt to set up a new nation, which would make the land owner a Sovereign leader, and therefore an entity forbidden from owning celestial real estate.
3. The 'consenting' government is basically saying 'we will use our military to keep other nations from taking that land from you, and, as long as you follow the rules, we won't use our military to force you out and take that land for our own uses.'
4. Well, for the proper mindset, it should be considered as 'held in trust on behalf of future generations.' I think the Grateful Dead said it best, "We don't own this place, but we act as if we did. It belongs to the children of our children's kids. The actual owners ha-ven't e-ven been born yet." [those aren't typos, I was trying to show the rhythm of the song]
5. If we come into contact with another civilization out in the Deep Black, we'll work out 'who gets to use what' then. Right now out influence is limited to one planet, one natural satellite, and a tenuous foothold on a second planet, so most of the 'owned by all of Humanity' spiel is purely metaphorical.
   

Amazingly similar to the "phony parking lot" scam where the unsuspecting are directed into a parking lot that is not really a parking lot, resulting in a visit to the police tow lot for retrieval of the car.

Is there a discount for the dark side?

Reportedly, this guy is King of the Moon.....

I recall someone mentioning Alice Cramdon as having something to do with the moon.

Dennis Hope, he has filed claim to it. Loop hole in the UN agreement. Said agreement states no country. As an individual he filed claim with the UN. Has been selling land for over 30 years.

"As an individual he filed claim with the UN."

And has the UN responded? Aside from 'laughing the claim out of court,' of course. (Assuming it even got as far as the sub-sub-subcommitte that would have put it on the docket do be heard at a UN session. )

He's ignoring some legal distinctions here. As an American citizen, he's bounder under Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty: "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." So his claim would require the US to authorize and supervise his activities. If he is working as an American citizen, his claim is, to be valid, a claim of ownership by the American government.

If however, he is claiming ownership as an 'independent entity,' and NOT as a US citizen, to honor his claim, the UN would have to recognize him as a sovereign nation, which is forbidden from claiming ownership of celestial bodies. For 30 years, he's been selling overpriced wall decorations, since those 'deeds' are not recognized by anyone with the legal, political, or military force to have a real say in the matter.

Well when you find out let me know, I have some bills to send them as well as some complaints:

keeps me up at night when too bright

moving around the oceans with tidal ebb & flow

making the coyotes and wolves howl at it as well as that 'ole Wolfman Jack

rental space for taking up space in our Universe

and of course, taxes of all kind: property taxes, heat use of the sun tax, view blocking tax, curiosity tax, girlfriend does crazy things tax ....

The good news is that there is a UN treaty dating from 1984:

http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/moon

The bad news is that none of the countries with space programmes, including the US and the UK, has signed up to it. I wonder why?

God owns it until he grants it an inheritance for the Jews.

If you ask Dennis Hope, he'll tell you he's the richest man on Earth-in fact, he'll say he's the richest man in the Solar System. Why? Because, as far as he's concerned, he owns most of it.

In the early 1980s, Hope, then unemployed for about a year, thought he'd be a good property owner and could make a living by managing real estate. He looked out the window and saw more unclaimed property than he could possibly fathom-the moon. He remembered a tidbit from a political science course he took in college-the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty said no country could own the moon, but it says nothing about individuals.

[PHOTOS: Spectacular Snapshots From Space]

Hope wrote a letter to the United Nations saying the moon was his and asked the group to come up with a legal reason why an individual could not claim ownership of the moon.

He never heard back.

"I sent the United Nations a declaration of ownership detailing my intent to subdivide and sell the moon and have never heard back," he says. "There is a loophole in the treaty-it does not apply to individuals."

Since then, he's sold more than 611 million acres of land on the moon. Individual, one-acre lots sell for $19.95 ($36.50 after a "lunar tax" and shipping and handling of the deed) and there are discounts for larger plots. He once sold a "country-sized" plot of land-2.66 million acres-for $250,000. He's sold plots on the moon to three former presidents (George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan). He's president of the Galactic Government, a democratic republic that represents landowners on the moon and some of his other properties (he claimed Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter's moon Io, and Pluto while he was at it). Customers can buy the entirety of Pluto for $250,000.

According to Tanja Masson-Zwaan, president of the International Institute of Space Law, the United Nations never responded because the treaty applies to both countries and its citizens, she told National Geographic.

"What [Hope] is doing does not give people buying pieces of paper the right to ownership of the moon," she told the magazine in 2009. Nonetheless, Hope continues to sell acre plots on the moon seemingly unabated.

[READ: NASA Passed on Mars Flyby Mission in 1990s]

Hope and other moon-fanatics are the subject of the new documentary "Lunarcy!" which follows people who have dedicated their lives to Earth's only natural satellite. There's Alan Bean, an astronaut-turned-artist, who paints moonscapes and imprints them with boots he wore when he became the fourth man to walk on the moon; Christopher Carson, a 20-something Texan who is determined to become the first man to leave Earth, move to the moon, and never return; and Hope, who still hasn't figured out how to turn the moon's "Delta" currency into American dollars, but has made a small fortune selling the moon nonetheless.

Director Simon Ennis says the moon is "so blatant and visually striking, so obvious in the night sky," that people are drawn to it. When he first heard about Hope's business, Ennis says he thought "it was the greatest idea anyone has ever had."

"I think it's an unbelievably smart and hilarious idea. He has a sense of humor about what he does, despite the fact that he is absolutely serious about it," Ennis says. In the documentary, Hope explains he once received an energy bill from a man who claimed to own the sun. After careful consideration, he says, he decided to ask the man to turn off the sun.

Talking to Hope, his seriousness is immediately clear: He's met with foreign dignitaries and attempted to get his government officially recognized by the International Monetary Fund (so Deltas can be traded for Earth currency in international markets). When China announced they would attempt to encroach on his property by building a moon base, Hope threatened their government.

Hope contends that there is more than $6 quadrillion dollars worth of helium-3 reserves on the moon, and that he and his property owners, of which there are thousands, own all of it. Helium-3 is used in nuclear fusion research on Earth and trades for about $125,000 an ounce.

"When China announced they planned to be on the moon by 2012, we wrote a letter to their president saying we didn't have a problem with it as long as they had a licensing agreement with us. Otherwise, their craft would not reach the moon," Hope says.

He wouldn't say how he planned to stop a country or person from going to the moon.

"We currently can stop any craft we want to from going to our properties," he says. "We have no problem with exploration, but as for anyone building anything of permanence, they don't own the land. That would be like Canada coming down to the United States and building a facility without asking permission. The response from the government would be irate-we would be the same if someone tried to build on the moon."

[NASA: Ancient Mars Had Key Ingredients for Life]

While he doesn't support others mining the moon, he does realize the historical importance of it. He's set up 23 "celestial reserves" on the moon, including the Apollo missions' landing sites and the two polar regions, where much of the moon's water is stored. In 2011, a group attempted to buy the moon's north pole from him for $50 million, but he declined the offer, he says.

"I verified that they had the money to do it, but we want to make sure people have what is needed for living at an inexpensive price," he says.

"Lunarcy!" has been screened at several prominent festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival and South By Southwest. It'll be aired for the first time to a wider audience on Epix on April 3. Since the documentary was finished, Hope says sales of lunar plots have increased by about 30 percent.

He says the time is quickly approaching when those owners will be able to take advantage of their land. The Galactic Government is exploring building a pyramid-shaped moon city that would have a roughly two mile by two mile base. He hopes to be the first private citizen to fly there.

"I'm a private pilot, so I'd love to be able to fly the first craft there," he says. "As the elected president of the Galactic Government, one of my responsibilities is to build a city on the moon."

source: www.usnews.com