The Man Who Sold the Moon
Now that isn't as far-fetched as it might sound. Who owns the Moon? Who owns Mars?
According to various international treaties, these are the common heritage of all mankind. Dennis Hope is a man. So by the usual sort of syllogism that passes for reasoning among the international political community, Dennis Hope owns the Moon.
Curiously, Hope doesn't seem to see it that way. For example, he was offered $50 million for the entire Moon and turned it down. Instead, he continues to sell deeds to parcels of the Moon piecemeal. He has sold large sections to companies for significant cash payments. But when offered the opportunity to score big, he balked.
Why, then, is he doing this? Why sell parcels of the Moon to ordinary people? I had the chance to catch up with Hope at a space conference in San Francisco. He was gracious enough to give me a few minutes of his time, and a deed to a small lunar parcel.
What he seems to be trying to do is to interest a very broad cross-section of the public in lunar territory by giving them a personal, financial interest in going there. Naturally, he isn't averse to making some money in the process. But he isn't making a fantastic amount of money, nor is that the point.
The point he makes over and over with every sale is that ordinary people want to go into space. He is not the first person to make this point, but he needs to continue to make it frequently. Happily, his customers are paying him to do that.
When I say that others have made this point in the past, I want to be sure you understand my meaning. In the 16th Century, Giordano Bruno speculated that stars are actually like our own Sun, with planets about them like Earth, and other peoples living upon them. Around 1610, Johannes Kepler wrote to Galileo, "Create ships and sails capable of navigating the celestial atmosphere and you will find people to sail them, people not afraid of the vast emptiness of space."
At the end of the 19th Century, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote of large human settlements in space. His contemporary Jules Verne wrote of ordinary men setting out from Florida on a trip around the Moon. Dozens of writers from Robert Heinlein to Neil Smith have written at length on this subject, extending and enlightening these visions.
In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry created the television program Star Trek which elevated science fiction television to a new level. In that series, he depicted men and women from many cultures, many walks of life, flying through the galaxy at Warp speed by the hundreds. He scattered the galaxy with Starbases and inhabited planets, and showed ordinary people living on those distant planets, travelling to them, and doing important work in space habitats and on starships. The popularity of Star Trek was enormous. The reason it captivated audiences is because it showed people like you and me, ordinary people flying in space.
In the 1970s, another brilliant visionary, George Lucas, unveiled his masterpiece Star Wars. This brilliant film also depicted millions of ordinary people living and working in a galaxy far, far away. Its popular appeal was staggering. Its ticket sales smashed all the box office records from years before. Why? Because people on Earth want to fly in space, because we want to go, to see, to do, to be . . . out there.
Space is not about political achievements. It is not about cooperating with other nations. It is not about scientific achievements. It is not about new knowledge. It is not about technological development. It is not about new toys. If space achieves things in these areas it is incidental to its primary function.
Space is a new frontier. It is an opportunity to expand the human horizon beyond all boundaries, beyond all borders, beyond all nations. It is about the future of the human species, and in no small measure it is about the future of life itself.
Going into space isn't something to be reserved for jet jockeys and scientists with doctoral degrees. It is something to be done by anyone with the conviction to go and do it. Ultimately, it will not be possible for governments to limit access to space. The urge to explore new vistas is a primal urge. The advancement of technology is proceeding at a pace that is transforming the world every year now, a pace which is unstoppable.
Beyond the desire to dominate others through politics, beyond the urge to learn new things or build new machines, there is a more fundamental desire: the desire to do well, to succeed, to profit by your efforts, to make money. This desire is responsible for the creation of the modern Internet, the development of the World Wide Web as a highly commercial landscape within cyberspace, and the success of the microcomputer revolution. That economic interest is what motivates the vast majority of people on Earth, and it can be the driving force to taking us beyond Earth, beyond our Solar System to spread our way of life and life as we know it through the galaxy.
Dennis Hope is a man who understands that aspect of the situation. He isn't selling deeds on the Moon as a joke, nor as a gimmick, but as a serious endeavor to interest a vast number of people at an economic level in going there and starting the development of this new frontier. The list of celebrities and companies who have purchased deeds from him is a tribute to his accomplishment in this area.
Whenever people from any place have moved into another, they have done so to better their situation. The distant ancestors of the American Indians followed herds of mammoths across Beringia about 10,000 years ago because they wanted to find better hunting grounds. Europeans came to the New World to seek gold, furs, and other resources to make their lives better, to provide a better future for their families. Americans went West for similar reasons, and then North into Alaska for gold and oil. Always it has been economics that has motivated the development of new frontiers.
Space is the same sort of frontier. It is awash in economic opportunity. From the sale of real estate to the gathering of solar power, from the unique opportunities for communications relay satellites to the tremendous value of remote sensing surveillance, and from the incredible potential of tourism to the practical aspects of manufacturing, space is just like the frontiers of the past. If we are to travel there, if we are to live there, we will need to make money there.
More than a little audacity is needed to do that. And folks like Dennis Hope show that audacity has not yet disappeared from the human species. It is, in fact, a very good sign that he has sold many thousands of deeds to parcels of land on the Moon. These motivated lunar real estate buyers will want to visit their properties. The sooner, the better.
