Property on the moon may not be reserved for little green men anymore. Mike Melvill became the first person to pilot a commercial craft into space on June 12, 2004. The spacecraft, called SpaceShipOne, was built by Burt Rutan and financed by Paul Allen. Now several private space travel companies are working to tap into the space tourism market, headed by companies such as Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Virginia-based Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic, which has the exclusive rights to Rutan’s design. With large-scale private space travel looming ever closer, the possibilities of profiting from space could be endless: Civilian space stations, lunar hotels and commercial moon mining are only a few of the potential markets for this investment sector.
Space: The financial frontier
Most investors probably haven’t given much thought to the prospect of investing in the moon. Until recently, the idea of humanity doing much of anything on the moon—other than walking or tossing a Frisbee—didn’t seem likely. But Virgin Galactic anticipates civilian space jaunts as early as 2009, and commercial usage of the moon likely won’t be far behind. Its frigid atmosphere aside, the moon may prove to be the next investment hot spot.
NASA plans to found a self-sustaining settlement at the moon’s south pole sometime around the year 2020. The plan involves four-person crews initially staying for a week at a time and gradually lengthening their stays until a permanent presence can be established, according to The Washington Post. Dutch architect Hans-Jurgen Rombaut has created a comprehensive design for a lunar hotel—the Hotel Lunatic—where tourists could revel in low gravity and watch the Earth rise in the black sky. Harrison Schmitt, the twelfth and last person to walk on the moon, has proposed mining its surface for the isotope helium-3. Helium-3 could help to create nuclear fusion as a power source for those of us with our feet still on Earth.
How can investors take advantage of this future opportunity? Taking possession of moon property is ambiguous—even impossible, according to some. Many companies purport to sell land on the moon, but the legitimacy of these claims is questionable at best.
Dennis Hope, founder of the Lunar Embassy, believes that his right to sell moon property is legal and enforceable. He claims that when the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1967 ruled no government could own extraterrestrial property, it neglected to include civilians. Referring to standards from the homestead era, Hope staked his claim on the lunar landscape and informed the United Nations, the U.S. government and the Russian government in writing. Since they have not responded, Hope believes this means his claim on the moon is valid. Those interested in moon property can allegedly purchase it from Hope starting at $29.99 per acre. Whether or not these claims will hold up when the moon is colonized is another matter entirely.
