Can you buy land on the Moon?

For now at least , the moon is like the sea : everyone can use it , but no one can own it . In 1967 the U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiated the Outer Space Treaty , which put forward that no nation can own a slice of the moon or an asteroid .

“ You have a right hand to go up and take the lunar land , but you do n’t have any right to pull out a square on the surface of the moon and say , ‘ That square is mine , ' ” allege Stephen E. Doyle , a retired attorney who served as NASA ’s Deputy Director of Internal Affairs . If the Space Settlement Institute - which lobby for private industry to develop land on other planet - has its way , Modern law will allow space colonists to stake moon claim and start a settlement .

Alan Wasser , the Space Settlement Institute ’s chairman , say that a private troupe should build up a “ spaceline , ” similar to an air hose , between the Earth and moon . And because a corporation is not a nation , the Outer Space Treaty would not apply . Corporations have settle new worlds before . The London Company was a joint livestock endeavour that established the Jamestown Settlement in 1607,providing transportation to pioneer in return for seven years of lying-in in America , where they cultivated tobacco and other crop for the society ’s profit .

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Wasser says that land ownership - and the hope of winnings based on it - is a necessary incentive to vest in space settlement . He is lobbying for legislating that would commit the U.S. government to honor future moon claims . But anyone can buy a deed to land on the moon right now . The Lunar Registry ( “ Earth ’s leading lunar real - landed estate authority ” ) sells such deeds on its website for about $ 20 an acre . Doyle articulate that some variety of lunar administration body is necessary to recognize and enforce property rights , but no such body be . So as it fend , the claim are not much more than fancy slice of newspaper .

Doyle says that future moonlight settlers could look to the Antarctic Treaty , which designates the continent as a scientific preserve and prohibits military body process or mining ; 28 countries maintain research station subject to review by the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs , which oversees best practices of scientific inquiry on the continent . “ Anybody who understands the implication of impose a national law on ethereal bodies , ” Doyle says , “ understands we are undecomposed to plow it like Antarctica and the high seas than we are to regale it like Manhattan . ” If not , he says , we would “ take all the problems and contests we ’ve had on the surface of the Earth for 5,000 old age and extend them to out outer space . ”

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