Buying land on the moon - seriously?

Factual Questions
1

I was puttering around with Google, and this turned up:

http://www.lunarlandowner.com

If you don’t want to click the link, the gist of it is this company called the Lunar Embassy trying to sell property on the moon, for cheap, cheap, cheap. As in, sixty bucks an acre or so.

There is a whole section on the relevant law and legality of land ownership on the Moon. The most relevant section is probably this one:

Now this is all well and good, but my SCAM Alarm is clanging very loudly in the back of my skull. This may be just because I find the idea of just being able to buy land on the Moon to be repulsive, but I think I have good reason to suspect that this is nonsense. Even if it is legit, it seems unlikely that individuals will be able to have their property claims honored in the future. I don’t know anything about property law, but a couple of questions come immediately to mind:

1: Assuming that this is legit, and one can actually claim property on the moon, what’s up with the price? Maybe I’m wrong about this, but since there’s no one to BUY the land from, where are my sixty buckaroos-per-acre going? That’s far more than it costs to do the filing and postage.

2: With that in mind, where do these people get the authority to do this (assuming that they have such authority)? It seems that if this is for real, that they essentially can carve up the lunar landscape at their discretion - and whether it is or not, how are they SELLING land that no one owns?

3: As I said, I know nothing about property law and the relevant treaties and laws WRT to the Moon, but I have to wonder how an individual can own land on the Moon if no government can claim any part of it. After all, if I purchase land within the United States, it is pursuant to the laws and regulations of that nation, isn’t it? Sure, it’s MINE, but it is registered with and under the authority of the United States. Likewise, if I were to buy land in another nation, I have to do so in accordance with my own national laws that pertain to economics and the actions of US citizens in other nations, and the land falls under the authority and laws of the nation in which I buy it (Someone please tell me if any of these underlying assumptions are wrong). So who the heck is there to oversee this transaction and have the overriding jurisdiction over the property? The website claims that they will send the claim and registration to the United States, USSR [sic] and the UN. Last I checked, though, the UN was not a real estate agency, and not responsible in any way for land ownership, or for making sure estate claims were honored.

So what’s up here? A simple “yes, this is for real” or “no, this is bogus” would be nice, but if anyone (like the SDMB lawyer types) can answer in more detail, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

~Grelby

2

We’ve covered this scam a million times already. If search is working, just plow through it and you’ll find all the debunking you’ll ever need in great detail.

3

Hrm, yes, I should have run a search… but it’s not working too well right now, due to the change in board software. Nonetheless, that is what I will do. Good to know that my hunch was on target, though.

4

Let’s just say that when the US builds a moon base they won’t care if the property is “owned” by anyone.

5

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=14984&highlight=moon

Not sure if it’s the same guys, but here’s an old thread on the same topic.

6

From what I can remember this isn’t so much a scam, as based on an extremely dodgy legal position. Their argument seemed to be based on International Law (as signed up to by the USA) as far as “Governments can’t own, but people can”, but then conveniently switches to United States Law to establish rights to claim the land and sell it on. No where is it explained why US law should apply anywhere and at anytime on the moon.

They’re trying to have it both ways and it will amount to a big fat zero if and when the practicalities of owning land on the moon actually count for anything.

7

But if you want to give your significant other the moon for Valentine’s Day, then who care’s whether it’s a scam! :slight_smile: It’s unlikely you’ll be mining any resources on it anytime soon.

8

As someone already pointed out, whoever builds a colony or base on the moon won’t be asking permission from anyone who buys into this scam. And if someone who actually “buys the land” ever manages to reach the moon to claim it, any country or corporation that might be occupying it by that time will laugh.
Though this does bring up an interesting idea: what if the people that buy into the scam file a class action suit against the first organization that builds on the moon? Would a judge laugh them out of court, or would they have standing to sue? I’d guess the first, but if they might actually be able to sue then they might actually be able to profit from what was supposed to be a good, honest, old-fashioned scam. :wink:

9

Bottom line for stuff like this:

Regardless of what legal loopholes some guy claims to have found, what matters is whether these will be respected once people actually begin developing the moon. Since this will certainly begin with government-owned entities, instead of private business, the chances of land claims being respected on the moon are slim to none.
Shit, they could even claim eminent domain if it came down to it, pay you your $60, and take your land – but I doubt you’d even get that.

File this with star-naming. Makes a fun wacky gift, but come on.

10

It’s not really factual, but Ben Bova’s SF novel Moonrise contains some interesting speculation about this issue. The upshot is that while no nation can officially claim property per se on the Moon due to the various treaties on the matter, there have to be practical allowances made for resource usage and allocation. Bova postulates an unwritten but collectively understood legal fiction in which de facto ownership is achieved by taking control of a given area and demonstrating ongoing use and exploitation of said area. It’s sort of like eminent domain, without actually crossing the line into “property ownership” as such. It seems likely to me that when we’ve achieved a significant presence in space and the siting of lunar manufacturing facilities and related development becomes a pressing issue, something very much like this will either evolve naturally or be deliberately put in place to cope with the problem. Or, alternatively, whichever nation arrives first on the Moon in a big way will simply unilaterally withdraw from the applicable treaties. Thus, it is not just conceivable but inevitable that, in the long term, lunar real estate will have real meaning.

All of that is a hundred-years-distant hypothetical scenario, though. In the here and now, buying a plot of green cheese and thinking it’ll have any legal standing whatsoever is a stupidity akin to paying those star registry people to plunk a name on a dot of light.

11

Given that international treaties of non-ownership of Antaractica seem to be doing fine, and that’s an environment a million times more hospitable than the moon, I guess there’s no chance of anybody having a problem with lunar land disputes any time soon.