You can legally own land on Mars!

The most frequently asked question we receive is: "How is it possible to buy land on another planet?"

The short answer: International governments, such as the United States, the former USSR, China, Japan, Canada, and others, never ratified the two treaties which would prohibit "...exploitation of the Moon and other celestial bodies for profit purposes".

The treaties were, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Treaty of 1984.

According to the proposed Outer Space Treaty of 1967, any government was forbidden to claim a celestial resource, such as our own moon, or some other planet, as their own. At the time of its acceptance, it did not occur to them to limit the claims of an individual, or a business entity.

Later on, the Moon Treaty of 1984 was intended to extend the provisions beyond "governements", however, it was never ratified. Therefore, an individual or company can engage in transacting business to make profit from so called celestial bodies.

The second most frequently asked question is: "Then what's to keep someone else from selling the same properties over and over again?"

The answer takes us back to the days of the California Gold Rush, and the laws set up governing "claims". You have heard the expression "staking your claim." Well, that literally meant taking a stake (a piece of wood with a pointed end), branding a unique "serial number" that would identify who you were that was already registered at either with the Town Marshall or the County Registrar, then driving it into the ground far enough that it would survive weathering. Put up 4 such stakes, and the area within was yours. So, "staking a claim" meant driving stakes into the ground and chronicalling yourself as the owner.

There were a few more rules around "claim staking", as you might expect.

1. You could not pull somebody else's stake out of the ground to claim it as your own.
2. The registrar must have an accurate description of the location and boundaries of your claim.
3. You must file your claim meeting all of the above criteria before somebody else does.

Now, as disputes would arise, a hierarchy of precedence was examined to determine the rightful ownership. Usually, the first claimant would have been given the rights without dispute, unless the later claimant could demonstrate that the location in question was not documented sufficiently.

Occasionally you could "pull a deed" from 1849 and read such award winning descriptions as:

Take 45 paces beyond McKendrick's pig pen towards the towering Oak, then stop. Turn to your right. Walk until you hit the chipped boulder. Stew done chipped it with his pick-axe when I done told him to git off ma claim. Turn right again, and walk straight till you see Sammy Farlon's oxen yolk, which I done said wasn't a stake, but as he knows the Judge and drinks swill with him at Lady Frilly's Dance Hall, the judge dang said he could leave it there to mark his claim....

But if someone returned and filed a claim with a surveyor's precision, citing lattitude and longitudinal lines, even if another claim was pre-existing, the courts would be obliged to consider the more accurate filing as the correct one. Some people even jokingly refer to these incidents as the true start of the real demand for lawyers.

Having said that, we are here to announce that we use the actual data from the Mars Survey missions to pinpoint land demarcation points. Therefore, should there have ever been a prior, undocumented claim for land on Mars, a court of competent jurisdiction would override any prior claims by any business entity, no matter how long they have been in existence or claim to have access to the planet in question.