luna-cy...

this apollo 11 birthday stuff has reminded me of a little story about a guy named (rather ironically and unfortunately) dennis hope.

a few years ago, my friend and co-worker-at-the-time (who would come into my office almost daily and act like he was going to urinate on a stack of books in the corner, and who had a propensity toward throwing sharpened pencils so that they would stick in the ceiling above my desk)* wondered out loud whether the united states owned the moon. it seemed unlikely to me that any country could claim ownership, so i did a little research and became acquainted with the story of mr. hope:

In 1967, the United Nations signed the Outer Space Treaty, which forbids any government from claiming the Moon (or any part of space for that matter). The treaty failed to mention anything about private individuals or corporations, so a second treaty forbidding anyone from claiming ownership of extraterrestrial real estate was proposed. Only a handful of nations (none of them space-faring) signed this treaty. This left a loophole in international law as big as the void of space itself.

In 1980, Dennis Hope sent letters to the United Nations, the United States government and the government of the former Soviet Union, informing them that he was officially claiming ownership of all planetary and lunar surfaces (aside from the Earth) in our solar system. He even gave them the opportunity to respond if they had objections, and as crazy as it sounds, he hasn't heard a word from any of them since.

So...for twenty years Dennis Hope has been selling plots on the Moon, Mars and other heavenly bodies - for a pretty reasonable price! And he's been pursuing this as not just a novelty sale, but a serious real estate transaction (complete with covenants and bylaws that prevent the unsightly or trivial usage of the property). His sales are accelerating, and within a couple of years he anticipates he'll have a constituency in the millions - enough to put serious pressure on the UN and the U.S. to recognize the government of Luna (never mind that not a single landlord has set foot on the property yet).

dennis hope, friends. dennis hope --con man, opportunist, space pirate, capitalist extraordinaire. when i found out about all of this i had just started teaching a new LSAT class and, full of dismay and ire, i told my students about dennis hope, thinking that they, too, being future lawyers and champions of justice, would be as unsettled as i was about the matter. but, more true to form of that which makes future lawyers, the only response i got was from a frat boy/jock type in my class who said something along the lines of, "this guy seems pretty smart to me."

now dennis hope continues to sell space on the moon. apparently he's doing the same with mars and venus. don't believe me? check here.

and he has the gall to refer to himself as the "head cheese"?!?! it all makes me feel a little lactose intolerant.

eminent domain, anyone?



*w/r/t my friend, in all truthfulness, i absolutely love this kid. he looks like a younger ed norton, reads way too much bukowski, has a fantastic laugh, and can be quite charming when he wants to be. he also used to (and i wouldn't be surprised if he still does) regularly prank call his mother at work. my favorite billy story involves running into him and another friend late on an autumn saturday night. they were very drunk, had just bought more beer, billy kept headbutting me, and each of them had (what i thought at the time was) dirt smeared all over themselves. i found out at work the following monday that they had been burning dollar bills and wiping the ashes on their faces. brilliant!