Who owns the moon?

The moon in April, visible from Nasa’s Orion spacecraft. A treaty from the 1960s declared that nobody can own outer space. — Nasa via The New York Times

IN Robert Heinlein’s 1950 novella The Man Who Sold the Moon, a tycoon embarks on a quest to be the first human on the moon and proceeds to auction off title rights to the lunar surface.

“There is going to be one hell of a fight one of these days over who owns the moon,” he tells his fellow businessmen. “I want the deck stacked so that we win.”