Dennis Hope, a former used-car salesman from Rio Vista, California, has spent more than four decades selling what he describes as plots of land on the Moon, as per a report in Science Blog. Hope began the venture in 1980 after a divorce and financial difficulties, when he became interested in whether international law prohibited private individuals from claiming lunar property.
Hope recalled an introductory political science course in which he had learned about the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. He obtained the treaty from a library and focused on its provision prohibiting national appropriation of celestial bodies.
