OPINION: One small step for man, one giant land grab

Imagine being the first person to arrive somewhere nobody has ever lived. You find water, valuable minerals and land that could support an entirely new industry. You invest billions of dollars developing the technology to get there. When you finally arrive, do you own what you find? And if you do, how much of it? In Robert Heinlein’s 1950 novella “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” a wealthy businessman imagines a future in which he can sell rights to the lunar surface before anyone else reaches it. More than seven decades later, that premise is beginning to resemble a real legal and economic debate. In her Oct. 4 New York Times article “Who Owns the Moon?” Selam Gebrekidan examines the growing competition among governments and private companies to establish a lunar presence and profit from its resources.

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