Why It's Time to Sell the Moon

The moon isn't up for sale—but it should be, argues Glenn Harlan Reynolds in Popular Mechanics. Dishing out lunar property rights would boost the stagnating government space program, and the interest is proven: One enterprising American has already sold 500 million "novelty" acres of the moon at about $20 per football field-size parcel.

While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty does ban countries from claiming the moon, it does not bar private capital. And as for establishing good title, "there's no reason the space powers couldn't agree on a new treaty that recognizes property rights and encourages investment," writes Reynolds, who would like his plot "near one of the lunar poles, please, with a peak high enough to get year-round sunlight and some crater bottoms deep enough to hold ice." (More moon stories.)