Property Sales Out of This World

For $19.99, plus tax, anyone can purchase an acre on the moon

ED VOGEL / Las Vegas Review-Journal 29sep03

[Prime Lunar Real Estate for Sale . . .But Hurry]

GARDNERVILLE — Motorists traveling through this community along U.S. Highway 395 sometimes stop at an attractive-looking office building and inquire about the nature of the business.

A sign outside denotes this as the "Lunar Embassy."

"They ask if it is a real estate office," owner Dennis Hope says. "It is. It is just not for properties on Earth."

Hope, 55, is the celestial executive officer and self-described "head cheese" of the Lunar Embassy.

He has claimed ownership of the moon and all planets other than Earth since 1980.

Over the past 23 years, Hope estimates he has made $6.25 million selling land on the moon and the planets, primarily Mars and Venus.

For $19.99, along with a $1.51 lunar tax, you, too, can buy an acre on the moon or Mars. Hope even will send you a deed. If you don't like it, he gives a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

"I am fully aware of what I am doing," he says. "I am not operating a scam. I am taking advantage of an opportunity shown to me by a loophole in the law. I am exercising my right to be as profitable as possible."

Back in 1980, Hope was an unemployed ventriloquist facing a divorce and bankruptcy. He had not worked for a year.

That Nov. 22, he was driving his brother's car in Concord, Calif., bemoaning his status in life and thinking that he could be wealthy if he owned a lot of land.

"I looked out of the windshield and saw the moon and said, 'There is a lot of property.' "

In a flash, he remembered something he learned 12 years earlier while taking a political science class at an Oregon college.

His professor discussed the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, signed by all members of the United Nations. Hope remembered that all governments agreed no nation would have sovereignty or control over any of the celestial bodies.

But they did not mention individuals owning planets, he recalled. He drove to the local library to check whether his memory had failed him. It hadn't.

"When they passed the treaty, they probably never thought about individuals," Hope said. "It may have been an innocent mistake. So I filed a declaration of ownership for the moon and the eight other planets and their moons."

He filed his declaration of ownership in the local courthouse and quickly sent letters to the governments of the United States, Soviet Union and the United Nations. In those letters he expressed his ownership rights and intention to sell and subdivide the moon and planets.

"I said if they had any problem with it, let me know," Hope said. "I am still waiting to hear from them."

Actually, these and other nations have no right to stop him because they surrendered any ownership rights in the U.N. treaty, Hope said.

Neither apparently does the Nevada attorney general's office. Asked whether sales of the moon violated any state laws, Tom Sargent, a spokesman with the attorney general's office, laughed.

"While some may believe otherwise, our jurisdiction does not extend to the moon," he said.

So, like the people who concocted the idea of pet rocks, Hope discovered a cash cow that endears him to people looking for gag gifts.

Hope swears he sold $6,000 worth of acreage and was out of debt within two weeks of first asserting his ownership of the celestial bodies.

"Obviously, some people buy it as a joke and think it would be fun to hang a deed up in their office," Hope said.

He employs a staff of six in his office in Gardnerville, about 16 miles south of Carson City. They take land orders exclusively off the Internet, at www.lunarembassy.com.

Customers can buy T-shirts and coffee mugs emphasizing their property right connections to the moon and planets.

Over the years, he has received numerous threats from people who claimed they already owned the moon.

In 1997, a German man demanded all the money he had earned from sales. It seems that centuries ago, King Frederick II had given this man's ancestors the moon in exchange for some assistance.

Since the Germans signed the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, Hope reasoned they did not honor that claim and so neither would he. The man never filed a lawsuit.

In recent months, Hope has been drafting a Galactic Government Constitution, which landowners will ratify or reject this fall. Income taxes would be illegal.

He believes colonization of the planets is inevitable. And with private property ownership, colonization will come more quickly.

"If I didn't do this, someone else would have," Hope said. "History, I think, will remember this started with the Lunar Embassy."

With his lunar wealth, Hope has purchased 3.8 acres of earthly land in Carson Valley. He indulges in a hobby of breeding horses.

"It costs me $35,000 a month to run the business," he said. "I guess on paper I am a millionaire. But if I went to the bank, I couldn't draw out $1 million. It has made a very comfortable living for myself and my wife."

Two years ago, Hope moved his lunar business from Rio Vista, Calif., to Gardnerville. City fathers in Rio Vista had asked him to send them a list of his office equipment and furniture so they could tax him.

"I said no," he remembers. "I am moving to Nevada. It wasn't the money but the principle."

Hope estimates that the first colonization of the moon will occur between 2015 and 2020.

"I don't take this all too seriously. But my goal is, when we go up to colonize the moon, I want to be at the ribbon-cutting ceremony," he said. "I believe we are doing something that will change history. To develop space, we have to do it through private property ownership."

source: http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Sep-29-Mon-2003/news/22251899.html 6dec04