Luke ‘n’ Bill

So the other day I was reading about the confirmation of water on Mars and it got me thinking, well some day I guess they really could plant someone on Mars. Which led me back to the thought of…well some day they’ve got to try to put someone on the moon. Which led me to the thought of….Who owns the moon?

Traditionally throughout history, the first time someone “owns land” is when the civilization that killed off the last civilization was organized enough to do some type of surveying to lay claims on the land. For example, North America. Indians follow the mammoth in, kill them off. Europeans run into the side of the continent and kill the Indians off. Europeans survey it and lay claim. After that it can really all be summed up with this great excerpt from Eddie Izzard.

Now this brings me back to a thought I had a while ago…who owns Antarctica? I can’t remember how I found out back then if I just asked someone or what, but my good friends Google and Wikipedia can give some answers to that. Apparently somewhere in the early 1900’s countries started laying claim to territories on Antarctica up until the 50’s when they started signing treaties on it. What I find interesting is this:

In 1991, 24 nations approved a protocol (addition) to the treaty that would ban oil and other mineral exploration for at least 50 years.

So I’m going to go ahead and make the call…I’ll give it 10 years before the US starts drilling there (5 before they start exploring for it).

But all of this still doesn’t answer the question….who owns the moon?