Promising the Moon--for $15.99

RIO VISTA, Calif. — Dennis Hope is a definite lunatic.

That’s lunatic as in moonstruck. As in, utterly besotted with the moon. And justifiably so. After all, he’s made quite a lot of money selling it.

Yes, that’s right, selling it.

You see, Hope has proclaimed himself Master of the Solar System. The Big Cheese. Owner of every planet and satellite except our humble Earth.

He has explained his omnipotence in letters to the White House and the Kremlin--and for good measure, the United Nations--and and no one has warned him off. So he figures he’s in the clear. And if he owns it, surely he can sell it. That’s why he has gone into business as an extraterrestrial real estate agent.

The incredible part is, he’s making good money at it.

It seems when Dennis Hope promises the moon, people take him literally.

Hope said he clears up to $4,000 profit each month selling what he bills as “the least expensive real estate in the universe”: 1,777 acres of lunar land for $15.99 plus tax and shipping.

Business is so good, he has hired three full-time “ambassadors” to help him peddle the heavens from this friendly little town on the Sacramento Delta. And faxed orders are piled up everywhere in his office--or rather, his “Lunar Embassy.”

“Whenever someone hears of this, their first response is, ‘You can’t do that.’ Well, we’ve sold over 10,000 parcels of property,” Hope said, “so evidently I can do it.”

Space experts acknowledge that there’s no law specifically prohibiting an individual from claiming the moon or planets. The international Outer Space Treaty of 1967 bars nations from appropriating celestial bodies. But it doesn’t mention individuals.

*

And the United States never ratified a separate treaty that aimed to ban private property on the moon, said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and the author of “Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy.”

Even so, Reynolds said, “You have to be fairly dumb to think you’re actually getting title [to the moon] from this guy.” Given Hope’s claim of $150,000 in sales since January, however, Reynolds said he has just one question: “Why didn’t I think of that?”

While Hope’s seizure of the celestial bodies may not be strictly illegal, it does violate a long tradition of common law holding that you can claim property only once you’ve established a presence on it and made improvements to it. Under those standards, Hope doesn’t cut it as an owner. Neither do any of the folks who have bought his deeds.

“Instead of Mars, we’re not going to start calling it Joe’s World,” said Brian Welch, a NASA spokesman.

Of course, few people who buy from the Lunar Embassy expect official recognition from NASA. They just think it’s cool to contemplate owning part of the moon. “I just thought it was fun,” said Martha Neal, a customer from--where else?--Half Moon Bay.

Skeptics see Hope’s solar sales as a fad sure to fizzle. “Just like the pet rock and the hula hoop,” sniffed Perry Wilson, a local real estate agent of the terrestrial type.

Even Rio Vista’s mayor, Fred Harris, calls it a “crazy scheme” that “takes a ding-a-ling” to buy into.

But as Harris points out, “There are plenty of ding-a-lings out there.”

Indeed, the idea of staking a claim in the cosmos seems to have universal appeal.

More than 700,000 people from around the world have paid a business called the International Star Registry $45 to name stars after them, even though the scientific community does not recognize the names.

And Hope’s Internet sites have attracted buyers from more than a dozen countries, including Germany, Syria, Thailand, Poland, Greece, Hong Kong and New Zealand. After folks in Sweden discovered the Lunar Embassy in January, he said, he received 4,000 orders in just 16 days.

One buyer requested a detailed map of his lunar ranch so he could subdivide it. Another, proposing the first subway system in outer space, asked to be named the moon’s director of transportation. A Swedish company called dibs on lunar telecommunications. From France, a customer requested lunar territory the size of a few football fields. “I don’t mind if that’s on the dark side,” he added politely.

A Swiss woman took a blunter approach: “I must have a piece of this rock!” she wrote.

One Rio Vista firm, DryVac Environmental, was so taken with Hope’s concept that it bought an entire “state” on the moon for $42,500 and dubbed it Lunafornia.

The company’s president, Daniel Simpson, claims the title of governor of Lunafornia. He hands out homesteads as employee bonuses, and he has deeded property to his clients as well, including several Brazilian businessmen. He’s planning to convene a Lunafornia legislature next year for “citizens” of his state.

“They get a real kick out of it,” Simpson said.

So does Hope, a bald, beefy, fast-talking 49-year-old who seems utterly delighted at his success.

An ex-ventriloquist who also has worked as a car salesman, an Air Force medic and a television producer, Hope thinks his latest gig has major growth potential--not just for his bank account, but for Rio Vista as well.

*

He talks with excitement of building a Lunar Cafe next to his Embassy, which sits amid alfalfa fields near the runway of the tiny Rio Vista airport. His big dream is more glamorous still: he wants to develop a Lunar Embassy Resort and Convention Center on an abandoned Army base in this community of 3,700.

Hope figures he could draw hundreds of his customers to annual sci-fi conventions. He would also troll for more down-to-Earth tourists by touting Rio Vista as a windsurfing paradise.

Though it certainly has strong winds, Rio Vista seems an unlikely tourist destination.

It does boast safe streets--just one murder in the past 20 years. And it is home to the nation’s biggest Belgian endive packing plant. But nothing all that exciting has happened here since Humphrey the humpback whale stopped by on his meandering tour of the Delta in 1985.

Still, city officials have long been eager to pump up Rio Vista. They want to bring in jobs, money and the kind of sizzle that’s lacking in the modest downtown, where shops like Hap’s Bait and Dandy Duds look as though they haven’t changed a bit in decades.

So city leaders are awaiting details of Hope’s hotel scheme with interest.

“We’ve always been the ‘sleepy little Delta village.’ Well, I don’t like sleepy little Delta villages. They smell bad,” Mayor Harris said. “We’re trying to grow up, stretch out and show people we’ve got a hell of a nice little town here.”

Though any convention center deal is a good ways off, Hope already has moved to expand his business.

He’s now selling plots on Mars--and urging the buyers to send trespassing bills to NASA when the Pathfinder space probe lands on the planet in July. (“Tell them not to hold their breath,” Welch advises.)

Venus will be up next. Then, perhaps, Jupiter.

“I’m not greedy,” Hope said. “I just like to play.”

He also likes to dream. And given his success so far, he sees no reason not to shoot for . . . well, for the stars.

Kicking back in his Embassy one recent day, dressed for galactic glory in denim shirt and jeans, he declared his ambition with a cocky grin: “I want Donald Trump to be known as the Dennis Hope of the Earth.”