Question Land ownership of the Moon?

[Sbb1413]

When I first came across the news that a person bought some land of the Moon, I took it to be completely rubbish as I thought the land ownership of anything beyond 100 km is banned under the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. However, I have come across such news (and memes related to it) several times since then and it leads me to ask whether it is legal to do so.

 

[Urwumpe]

When I first came across the news that a person bought some land of the Moon, I took it to be completely rubbish as I thought the land ownership of anything beyond 100 km is banned under the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. However, I have come across such news (and memes related to it) several times since then and it leads me to ask whether it is legal to do so.

Its legal to sell you property on the moon. But you can't sue anybody selling your property on the moon multiple times to different people or building a space station there.

Its pretty much an old school version of NFTs.

 

[N_Molson]

You can see it as a "theoretical property".

 

[1987VCRProductions]

It's the same thing as those companies that will "sell" you stars to name, it's really meaningless imho. Once human colonization of the Moon starts I imagine it will be treated similar to how Antarctica is treated, where no one country really owns it but rather it is shared for scientific research and habitation. Now, on the subject of people claiming to own land on the Moon (or the whole Moon itself), I seem to remember reading something about some eccentric crank complaining to the press that the Apollo astronauts were trespassing on his territory, claiming that ownership of the Moon has been passed down through his family for generations. I think I saw that nugget when looking up the New York Times' editions covering the first Moon landing, but it's been so long that I don't remember, and I may be completely misremembering this. I wonder if the library of the college I went to will let me go through their microfilm of the New York Times again.

 

[Gargantua2024]

I remember reading an article that Richard Garriott currently owns one of the old Soviet Lunokhod rovers (Lunokhod 2 probably) as according to him he won it an a Sotheby's auction back in 2010

 

[richfororbit]

Dennis Hope, I think his name is. What a loser.