Re: happy 40, apollo...

4
file this under retarded...
NatGeo wrote:Who Owns the Moon? The Galactic Government vs. the UN

On July 20, 1969, astronauts stepped onto the moon and planted an American flag—not to claim the moon but simply to commemorate the U.S. role in the first moon landing.

Forty years later a Nevada entrepreneur says he owns the moon and that he's interim president of the first known galactic government.

Dennis Hope, head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation, has sold real estate on the moon and other planets to about 3.7 million people so far.

As his customer base grew, he said, buyers wanted assurances that their property rights would be protected.

So Hope started his own government in 2004, which has a ratified constitution, a congress, a unit of currency—even a patent office.

"We're now a fully realized sovereign nation," Hope said.

The trouble is that, legally, nobody can own the moon or anything else in space, for that matter, said Tanja Masson-Zwaan, deputy director of the International Institute of Space Law based in the Netherlands.

"What Lunar Embassy is doing does not give people buying pieces of paper the right to ownership of the moon," she said.

Lunar Loophole?

The controversy began in 1980, when Hope registered his claim to the moon with the United Nations. The claim went unanswered, so he figured his rights were secured.

To date his company has sold more than 2,500,000 1-acre (0.4-hectare) plots of lunar land, which Hope says are rich in an isotope of helium that has an earthly price tag of about U.S. $125,000 an ounce.

Today a deed for a plot, printed with the buyer's name, is selling online for $22.49, plus tax.

Legal experts counter that the UN didn't answer because it didn't have to: The moon is unclaimable under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was ratified by 98 UN member countries, including the United States.

Hope, however, said there's a loophole.

The treaty prohibits countries from claiming property in space, but "I filed my claim of ownership as an individual."

The fact that he's now claiming his Galactic Government has legal authority over the moon might seem problematic. But Hope said that the fledgling regime isn't a member of the UN and so doesn't have to abide by its laws.

Whether Hope can legally own the moon is a matter of interpretation, the space-law institute's Masson-Zwaan noted.

Although it's not spelled out, the spirit of the UN treaty is that it applies to governments and their private citizens, which invalidates Hope's claim to the moon and other celestial bodies, she said.

But that shouldn't disappoint any prospective moon millionaires.

You don't need to own a place to make money on it, Masson-Zwaan said. But you do need a clear legal framework for doing business on the property—something the moon currently lacks.

On the plus side, a 1984 amendment to the Outer Space Treaty lays out clearer rules for managing the moon's natural resources, which would apply to businesses looking to establish hotels, mining operations, and other commercial endeavors on the moon.

That addendum, however, has been ratified by just 13 countries, none of which are major spacefaring states.

Moon "Just Another Continent"

One of the main hang-ups with the 1984 treaty is how countries would share the wealth.

Stores of helium-3, for example, could make the moon the next Persian Gulf. The gas, which is rare on Earth, has been tagged as a clean, renewable energy source of the future.

For billions of years the moon, unprotected by an atmosphere, has been showered with helium-3 from the sun. All that helium is now trapped in the moon's soil.

Its use as a fuel, though, hinges on developing a reliable process for fusion, a form of power generation that's "like a controlled hydrogen bomb explosion," said Peter Kokh, president of the nonprofit Moon Society.

Other more immediate uses for the moon include mining moondust for lunar construction, launching satellites, and setting up solar-power collectors, Kokh said—projects for the first wave of moon settlers.

The moon "is just another continent across a different kind of sea," he said.

"We foresee a future in which people will be living on the moon and producing materials for solving Earth's problems."

United States of the Moon?

Kokh personally thinks that the best possible future is one in which the people of the moon rule themselves.

The process of colonizing the moon's challenging landscape will change the needs and wants of the society that settles there—just as the desires of English colonists changed when they got to the New World.

"Lunar settlers may want to bring the American way of life to the moon, but they will leave Washington, D.C., at home," he said.

"In the meantime it'd be better to have UN stewardship," Kokh said. "Right now [the world has] a working international relationship in the International Space Station ... and that's a good precedent."

Space-law expert Masson-Zwaan agrees, saying that the first bases built on the moon should be cooperative projects.

"I don't think we'll have people putting in their flags and saying, This is my little square, and I'm going to build a base here," she said.

Lunar Embassy's Hope, meanwhile, already seems to be charging toward establishing an autonomous moon government.

Recently, Hope said, he's been sending letters on behalf of his government asking other countries not to trespass on the moon without a license.

He's also battling the International Monetary Fund for official recognition of his government's currency, called the delta.

"The position of the Galactic Government is that we're not trying to distance ourselves from other governments. We just want recognition so we can work together," Hope said.

"We're not hostile, not angry—we just want to be accepted."
i remember seeing ads for this stuff before, thinking it was a novelty item people got others as gifts or something, like naming a star. no idea the guy was serious. lol.

Re: happy 40, apollo...

5
Recently, Hope said, he's been sending letters on behalf of his government asking other countries not to trespass on the moon without a license.

He's also battling the International Monetary Fund for official recognition of his government's currency, called the delta.
This guy is completely off his fucking rocker. How can his currency be recognized when nothing is traded in it? How can anything be traded in it when they can't reach the land in which it would be legal tender? I can't believe that this guy's justification for his claim is that inter-fucking-national treaties don't apply because he's just one person. Wouldn't that wording right there clue in anyone else, who actually has two brain-cells to rub together, to the fact that they will have nary a snowball's chance in hell of enforcing their farcical claim to the land? It's the fucking Moon fer feck's sake!

Re: happy 40, apollo...

6
Cnet wrote:The Moon lands on Google Earth

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Google Earth 5.0 now incorporates the landscape and terrain of our closest and dearest celestial relative, the Moon.

Earth's moon, often known as the Moon, or simply just 'Moon' for short, is the rocky, cooler companion to the star of our local cosmic show, the Sun. And if you're familiar with Google Earth 5.0, you'll know what to expect of its appearance within this update.

It's a fully navigable 3D model of the satellite and its surface, built from detailed, stitched images, panoramic photography, video footage and audible guided tours from Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11 'naut Buzz Aldrin.

It seems the whole moon can be explored, though low-resolution imagery inhibits the close-up investigation of many zones. But for all the important areas and craters we examined, it's just a matter of clicking on whichever rock, lump, crater or grey thing piques your curiosity.

Take Apollo 16's landing site, for example. If we zoom in close enough we're given a pile of pinpoints to highlight areas of particular interest, one of which shows a panoramic image taken of Apollo 16's commander John Young, and his lunar Rover. Google Earth will let you fly, a la Street View, into this panorama and explore it from the perspective of the camera and lens which took the photo way back in 1972.

Really, the best way to see what's new in this update is to download the software for free, and get exploring. But over the next few pages we've captured a few examples of what to expect from Moon in Google Earth, including 3D models of some of the junk we've left stranded up there, almost 240,000 miles away from our home planet.