this video is made possible by brilliance you'll learn more about brilliant later in today's video but if you would like to learn more about them right now go to brilliant org forward slash brain food you'll also find a link in the description below back in the halcyon days of the 1980s when all people had to worry about was Total Annihilation via widespread nuclear war an American called Dennis hope made international news when he reveals that after exploiting a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty he had become the sole owner of the nearest celestial neighbor the moon since then hope has made a small fortune selling off pieces of the satellite service while the media has mostly painted hope is a harmless eccentric if you study his story a little more closely as we want to do you all see that hope is actually a masterful entrepreneur and almost every aspect of his story is a carefully crafted falsehood or half truth that nonetheless has seen the man himself earn millions selling nothing more than pieces of paper so how did he pull this off well the story goes that in 1980 mr. hope was a down-on-his-luck unemployed shoe salesman reeling from a divorce and looking for a way to make ends meet after learning that there was a great deal of money to be made buying and selling property he states I looked out the window saw the moon and thought hey there's a load of property hope ran to his local library for those unfamiliar it's a sort of place where they used to store the partial contents of the future internet on the bodies of deceased trees to research who if anyone owns the earth satellites in that house of plant death II discovered that according to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed by all spacefaring nations at the time as well as over 100 others no country can claim sovereignty over any such celestial body hopes interpretation of this was that while the treaty forbade countries and governments from staking a claim to the moon it said nothing about an individual doing so towards this end he filed a claim for ownership of the moon with to quote him his a local US governmental office for claim registries supposedly after some pushing and prodding a supervisor at the office signed off on his claim which made in the sole owner of the moon as a courtesy hook then wrote a letter to the United Nations and the Russian government telling them about the claim he was granted by the US government and asking if they wish to challenge it after if no one responded he began selling off pots of land on the moon for about twenty dollars an acre Rob cite me more if you wished also to purchase the mineral rights for your particular lunar plot incidentally for more terrestrial rules on this you can see our video if you own land how far above and below it do you own since then Hope has claimed to have sold 611 million acres of land on the moon 325 million acres on Mars and two combined 125 million acres on Venus IO one of Jupiter's moons and Mercury 2 approximately six million property owners including according to him celebrities like Tom Hanks George Lucas and even former presidents Carter Bush jr. and Reagan he also claims that the Hilton Marriott hotel chains have bought extensive properties from him along with to quote him 1800 Maitre corporations beyond selling property on the various celestial bodies he also claims to be the de facto ruler of the galactic governments which he also states currently has diplomacy with 30 governments on this planet we can only assume by diplomacy that at some point he sent an email off that some clerk actually replied to whatever the case as for the United States hope States on his lunar embassy website that we at the lunar embassy are pleased that our work since November of 1980 is finally starting to be recognized by the United States of America government as being valid this is a huge step in the official recognition by the USA as to want this huge step in the official recognition of his claim of ownership of the moon and other such celestial objects was eons were sure the IRS being happy to collect taxes from him the preceding paragraph on the website indicates that this acknowledgments came in the form of hope being to quote named co-chairman of the Republican Congressional business Advisory Council yes also been given the National Republican leadership award and more recently he has been issued the highest honor the National Republican Congressional Committee has the prestigious Republican gold medal well leave it to you to decide just how much official recognition by the USA this red is moving swiftly on his galactic government is technically the richest in the solar system as he states we have a currency for our government we're the only government that has any backing for its currency whatsoever which are the helium-3 reserves on the surface of the Moon we have six quadrillion dollars worth of helium reserves in our treasury right now this all brings us around to how much if any of hope' story is actually true and whether or not he has any genuine legal claim to the moon to begin with it's often reported as the fact that hope discovered a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that allowed him as an individual to claim ownership over the moon however if you actually read the treaty it's kind of what we do here you'll find that it very clearly in article 6 states the activities of non governmental entities in outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate state party to the treaty as hope has never received authorization by any state party to the treaty for activities on the moon including ownership is generally agreed by space lawyers that hope is full of space dung and that the deeds he sells are nothing more than a novelty item and if you think we're making up the whole space lawyers that this is actually at another thing that your high school guidance counselor failed to mention to you despite the fact that the International Institute of space law was formed all the way back in 1960 and currently has members in nearly 50 countries alright but let's go back to hope now this point you might be thinking but didn't hope get such an authorization by a state party or in the u.
s. governmental office for claim registries approved his claim well another problem with his origin story is that there is no such government's office of the United States federal government he could have gone to that deals with registering individual claims to property like this and further no local state office has the power to officially grant someone the rights to land outside of their jurisdiction either which the moon and various planets most definitely are this hasn't stopped hope claiming that a representative of such an office accepted his claim for some reason unfortunately the official documentation of the processing of his claim was supposedly misplaced and for whatever reason he can't seemed get an official copy of it from any government office instead he can only provide a copy that he made of it this is a copy mind you that is filled with numerous spelling and grammatical errors and that apparently refers to hope as the head cheese in any event it should also be noted that the illumina deeds that hope cells contain a disclaimer clearly and prominently identifying it as a novelty gift nevertheless Hope himself vehemently insists that the deeds are real he explains on his website that the term novelty is only used to discourage frivolous lawsuits also hilariously points out that well if you look under the true definition of novelty as being something that is unique having the quality of being novel a small mass-produced item with it exactly that he doubles down on the authenticity here by noting the inclusion of novelty does not diminish the value of the property that you purchase in any way as every deed is recorded and registered in the lunar embassies registration database and every owners information is listed with that registration you own this property he further states that 17% of people buy the product as a novelty item but we also know that 42% of people register the property in the name of a trust they've set up meaning they take it more seriously and of course we also know that the major corporations who own land have a specific intent for it well spare you more such claims but suffice it is to say that if you look over the company's website they are pretty adamant that what they are selling is actual rights to property on the moon and hopefully even have a whole section on one of their web pages dedicated to helping people spot fraud because if one thing is clear above all others hope definitely has a great deadpan sense of humor all that a site despite hopes aforementioned claims that only 17% of buyers think it's a novelty item we feel pretty confident that most people buying these deeds know full well it's all just a fun gift which brings us to the big question has hope actually achieved the American dream of earning a million dollars of his little business venture well as noted hope claims that he sold 611 million acres of land on the moon 325 million acres of lands on Mars and he combines 125 million acres on Venus IO and mercury given the prices he's selling at $20 and up per acre and that the total here is over a billion acres sold this means hope is officially one of the richest people in the world even if we assume he offers steep discounts for bulk buys which for what it's worth on his website he currently does not seem to offer speaking of his obscene wealth hope claims that in 2011 an organization approached him and offered to buy the entire North Pole of the moon for a whopping fifty million dollars but he turned down their offer his reason we want to make sure people have what is needed for living at an inexpensive price we're gonna be honest here and say we're not entirely sure what he was trying to say that or whatever the case hope notes that his current net worth is well over a hundred trillion dollars in land alone owing to his ownership of over seven trillion acres of extraterrestrial properties beyond the lands hope of course claims to own exclusive mineral rights to by his estimate six quadrillion dollars of helium-3 on the moon alone this isn't mentioning the countless deposits of minerals and resources on the other celestial bodies that he claims to own such as the rich methane deposits hidden inside Uranus full disclosure here be co-author of this script Carl swore word of facts fiend fame chose this topic solely so that he could make that Uranus joke more on the whole methane Uranus thing and a bonus fact later but going back to hype we're just saying the IRS might want to look into his taxes to make sure that he's properly paying on everything as we're pretty sure we just figured out how to solve the United States his national debt problem you're welcome all joking aside how much has hope actually made from all of this well really only hope and the IRS no but given the fact that hopes seemingly has had no other job since nineteen ninety five we're guessing he's at least done reasonably well and certainly given it would take only about twenty six thousand dollars a year on average do crest the 1 million dollar mark in the near four decades he's been doing this he has easily eclipsed the classic American dream of making a million dollars is off little more than elbow grease and an idea or in his case some high-quality paper printer ink and sufficient postage and speaking of brilliant businesspeople brilliant add transitions to today's sponsor brilliant brilliant is an online learning platform that might make your brilliance not a guarantee and I want to tell you about brilliant just before you get in do some bonus facts today you've heard me talk about brilliant before they're a learning platform that focuses on active learning this is where you're given a short with information on a scientific concept then you ask to solve a problem based on that information it's an incredibly effective way to learn what's so great about brilliance over traditional learning is that you can take it slow and I know this sounds a bit counterintuitive because we live in a world where everything's like get it done now as quickly as possible but really with brilliant you can just take a few minutes every day to learn something small and then as the days and the weeks and the months rolled by faster than you'd imagine you'll have built up an incredible knowledge base all while feeling as if you weren't ready even trying brilliance has full courses where you can go through and learn the basics and then move on to master more intermediate or advanced things or you can take daily challenges where you solve a small problem every single day the sort of short daily practice can lead you from curiosity to mastery in far less time than you might think so go to brilliant org forward slash brain food and finish your day a little smarter the first 200 of you to do that will get 20% off your annual subscription and you'll be able to view all of the previous daily challenges in the archives and let's get into those bonus facts hope was not the first to claim to own the moon or the last there is one man who has the strongest claim of all computer game designer Richard Allen Garry on des cailloux why he is the only individual to legally own something that is currently on the moon in 1993 purchased the Ilana quad 2 and the lunar 21 Lanza for sixty eight thousand five hundred dollars to auction as he notes I purchased noona Cod from the Russians are now the world's only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body though there are international treaties that say no government shall lay claim to geography off planet Earth I am NOT a government Samara Lee I claim the moon in the name of Lord British funny enough beyond being the son of an astronaut he's also the only person who claims to own the moons who have actually been to space he did serve I paying thirty million dollars to visit the International Space Station in October of 2008 spending twelve days there as another fun fact about Garriott he is generally credited as being the man to coin the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game and then Oh RPG and now for another bonus fact going back to the methane in Uranus it turns out that contrary to popular belief methane in any measurable amount in most people's flatus is not terribly common with only about one third of humans having measurably significant amounts of it in their farts even then in one small study looking at only 10 people's farts and experimenting around a bit with their dance during the study it was films that those that did have measurable amounts of methane only produced it when fed significant amounts of fiber the fiber free version of their farts was almost wholly made up of nitrogen for all 10 subjects with the fiber version the average fart only contained about 3.
