Jordan Rude, MJLST Staffer
Recently a friend of mine received, for his birthday, a deed to one acre of land on Mars. That’s right—he is the proud owner of property located approximately 34 million miles from Earth. This is possible thanks to the efforts of various (and often interconnected) websites such as Buy Mars, Buy Planet Mars, Lunar Registry, and Lunar Land. While selling extraterrestrial property is not a recent development (see here and here), and there does not appear to be any recent lawsuits regarding this practice, these methods still deserve scrutiny. With the rapid advancement of technology in recent decades and increasing participation by private companies in space programs (SpaceX recently tested a Mars-capable rocket), human settlement on the Moon and Mars is becoming a possibility (albeit a distant one) within our lifetimes. At that point, property ownership will become an important and possibly contentious issue. For the millions of people who have bought land on the Moon and Mars, the question of whether their claims will be recognized in such a situation is a not insignificant one.
Some of these websites claim to have legal standing for their ownership of property on Mars. Consider Buy Mars (owned by Lunar Land). Under the heading “Lunar Land’s Legal Right To Offer Planet Mars Land,” the site makes reference to the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1967 as well as the tradition “dating back to early U.S. settlers” of staking a claim on surveyed land through the U.S. Office of Claim Registries. The Outer Space Treaty has been previously discussed by this blog (in a different context). Suffice it to say that this treaty prohibits countries from claiming ownership of land on Mars and other extraterrestrial property, but says nothing about individuals or corporations. Thus, the argument would be that Buy Mars, because it is not a sovereign nation, is not subject to the treaty specifically prohibiting claims of ownership on Mars.
Beyond the lack of a direct prohibition, Buy Mars also claims historical precedent as an affirmative justification. This reference to historical precedent is problematic for two reasons: first, the U.S. Office of Claim Registries does not exist, and likely never existed; and second, this is not an accurate statement of the process by which the West was settled. In fact, the federal government sold the land—first as townships and other large plots, and later in smaller, more affordable plots, before finally offering land for free under the Homestead Act of 1862 (see Michael C. Blumm & Kara Tebeau, Antimonopoly in American Public Land Law, 28 Geo. Envtl. L. Rev. 155, 165–71 (Winter 2016)). That is, the federal government owned the land it sold to speculators and other settlers (though this ownership came more or less from the government declaring it to be so, not dissimilar to what Buy Mars has done). So, because the U.S. government does not own land on Mars that it could sell to Buy Mars (to then sell to us), on its face the claimed historical precedent is not in fact proof of the legality of the process.
However, setting aside the flaws in Buy Mars’ formulation of the argument, let’s assume that the principles of westward expansion can be applied to property on Mars—would this type of claim survive a legal challenge?
Most likely it would not. Construing the westward expansion analogy narrowly, the U.S. government would have to first own land on Mars and then distribute it to corporations like Lunar Land or individuals. This is clearly prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty. That being said, if a company like SpaceX lands on Mars, the Outer Space Treaty would potentially not restrict its ability to claim land. At that point, it is unclear what the legal policies governing ownership would be. In that situation, a process loosely similar to westward expansion could be utilized, wherein a larger entity (in this case a large company) distributes land to newcomers. The key difference between the Buy Mars argument and SpaceX landing on Mars would be the latter company’s physical presence on the planet—an important aspect of making such property claims and the most likely way to get around the Outer Space Treaty. This could be extremely lucrative for SpaceX but problematic for those who have already purchased land on Mars. Ultimately, the websites currently offering land on the Moon or Mars do not have legal standing to do so, and any person who bought such land is unlikely to find legal protections should the need arise. The law in this field is very uncertain, if it exists at all, and the day may come where a true answer is needed.
Of course, the legal implications of this process should not deter you from investing in extraterrestrial property for the fun of it. My friend’s deed comes from Buy Planet Mars, whose website makes quite clear, in the FAQ section, that the deed is “a novel gift and for entertainment purposes only.”