The Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce is offering up an acre of lunar land for auction at its “By the Light of the Moon” meeting and dinner dance on Sept. 16. And while the promise of owning a part of the moon is intriguing enough, the story behind how the moon went up for sale, and the man who owns it, is its own planetary-sized tale.

The acre is courtesy of the Lunar Embassy, an earth-based company started by Dennis M. Hope in 1980 that claims ownership of the moon and the eight other planets in the solar system.
That’s right—he owns the moon.

But how does one own the moon? Through a loophole in international law, of course. Almost broke and down on his luck in 1980, Hope, who now calls himself “The Head Cheese” of the Lunar Embassy, was looking for a way to make money, possibly through buying some property and mortgaging it.
“I looked up at the moon and thought, there’s a lot of property,” he says.

Using what he calls a loophole in the United Nations’ 1967 outer space treaty—which states that no government or nation can claim ownership of extraterrestrial bodies—Hope filed papers with a federal claim registry office in San Francisco and informed the governments of the United States and Russia, and the United Nations, of his ownership of most of the solar system. No one responded to the claim, which, to Hope, means the claim is valid.

As legal justification, Hope cites the U.S. Homestead Act, which allows individuals to claim ownership of property by living on the land, improving it or paying taxes. In other countries, like Romania, Hope says you don’t even have to see the land you’re claiming in order to homestead it.

“Since there were no standardized rules … I just made up my own rules,” he says. He likens his approach to that of the European royals who claimed ownership of lands in the New World without leaving the comfort of their castles.

“We’re really doing nothing different than has been done throughout our history,” he says.

Of course, Hope isn’t the only one trying to cash in on the real estate goldmine that is the moon. The Lunar Registry claims that it has the sole legal right to sell moon property, charging around $20 an acre for land in the Sea of Vapors or the Sea of Cold. Rather than claiming ownership of the moon, the Lunar Registry’s Web site (www.lunarregistry.com) states that the proceeds from each purchase of lunar acreage are “pooled with funds from all lunar property sales in order to create the investment capital required to occupy and develop the moon—and to create a true, legal basis for lunar property ownership.”

Hope says he has his eye on an eventual moon landing as well and that his Lunar Embassy invests heavily in potential propulsion systems that could make the journey from the Earth to the moon much easier.

In the last 25 years, Hope says 3.4 million people in 180 countries, and 1,700 corporations, have bought off-world real estate from the Lunar Embassy. About 413 million acres of the moon have been sold so far, a small fraction of the more than 9.4 billion acres of property available, according to Hope. Two hundred million acres of Mars have been claimed, while about 80 million acres of Venus have been purchased. All it takes to get a little piece of heaven is $20, plus a $1.51 “lunar tax” (or “Martian,” “Venutian,” etc.) and $10 for shipping and handling for the deed.

That translates into about $8.25 million in gross sales since 1996, according to Hope, who got his MBA in sales and marketing and says he just received a doctorate in business administration.

It would seem that anyone who can sell off pieces of the moon must be a slick salesman, but not all of Hope’s pitches have worked out. In 1998, he says he contacted GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, the makers of Tums and Rolaids, respectively, and offered them the rights to Jupiter and Saturn for use in advertisement. Hope thought the companies could say their antacid tablets had “conquered Jupiter” and other gaseous planets, but the two companies declined. He’s also tried to sell Pluto—the entire planet—to Disney, but “they were less than enthusiastic.” Pluto is currently for sale on the Lunar Embassy’s Web site (www.lunarembassy.com) for $250,000.

Hope’s ambitions lie beyond simply owning the moon. Last year, the Lunar Embassy established a galactic government and drew up a constitution that was ratified by “99.9 percent” of extraterrestrial property owners, Hope says.

A brief description of some of the changes lunar residents could look forward to under galactic law show that Hope is still concerned with earthly matters. For example, candidates for galactic government would be prohibited from raising campaign funds totaling more than two times the annual salary of the position for which they’re running. Another notable change: those violating any of the “societal laws” established by the galactic government will have their lands confiscated and will be kicked off the planet. The “societal laws” would include violent crimes like murder, terrorism and kidnapping, Hope says. Criminals from the Earth and other planets could eventually be imprisoned on the dark side of the moon.

“If we have the ability to get rid of them, get rid of them,” he says.

Other plans include the establishment of a computer network on the moon, which Hope says will be up and running by the end of this year, thanks to a $60,000 investment by a company he says he can’t name. The computers will provide the world’s first off-world Internet access, establish a moon bank and a lunar registry for corporations. The prospects of this off-world computer array are iffy, at best, but in a February 2004 Space.com interview, Hope boasted that the flags of the Lunar Embassy and the galactic government would be in place on the moon by the end of that year.

There are no flags up there now, save for the American flag planted up there almost 40 years ago, but Hope is, well, hopeful for his lunar computer plans.

“Once the computers are on the moon and the press covers the landing of those and watch the computers open their array of solar panels … and they transmit their first signal … the game is afoot,” he says.

You can buy a piece of the moon at the Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce’s “By the Light of the Moon” dinner dance, meeting and auction at the Ashworth by the Sea on Friday, Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. Tickets are $60 per person and can be purchased by calling the Chamber at 603-772-2411. For more information, call the chamber or visit their Web site at www.exeterarea.org.