Satkhira youths buy land on the moon

Two Bangladeshi youths have bought one acre of land on the moon from a US-based organization, Lunar Embassy Corporation, for just $55.

The two friends, SM Shahin Alam and Sheikh Shakil Hossain, on Wednesday received the land deed and a map showing the location of their land on the surface of the moon.

Shahin Alam claimed they were the first Bangladeshis to buy a piece of land on the moon.

Former US presidents George W Bush, Jimmy Carter and the late Ronald Reagan also bought land on the moon from the same organization, he said.

Shahin said he and his friend Shakil had planned to buy a plot of land on the moon after learning from newspapers that it was a possibility.

He said: “We bought the land as a hobby. We don’t know if it is suitable for living there. However, if we get a chance to go there, we will surely go.”

Sheikh Shakil Hossain said: “The price of a plot of land on the moon varies depending on the location. We have bought a less expensive piece of land.”

An acre of land on the moon can cost from $24.99 to $499 depending on the location of the plot, he added.

According to Dennis Hope, head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation, the firm has sold real estate on the moon and other planets to millions of people since 1980.

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

The trouble is that, legally, nobody can own the moon or anything else in space, for that matter, Tanja Masson-Zwaan, president of the International Institute of Space Law, told National Geographic Channel in 2009.

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

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 (National Geographic Channel).

Legal experts counter that the UN did not answer because it did not have to: The moon is unclaimable under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which has so far been ratified by 100 UN member countries, including the US.