When multi-millionaire computer game developer Richard Garriott purchased a missing lunar rover from the Russians in 1993, his friends thought he was crazy.
However, after scientists recently discovered the long lost Lunokhod 2 rover marooned on the same lunar surface it had vanished from over three decades ago, it may just be Garriott who gets the last laugh.
Since acquiring the rover for $68,500 at an auction at Sotheby’s, Garriott has boastfully maintained that he is “the world’s only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body.”
Now Garriott is taking the braggadocio up a notch, claiming that he may own not only the land on which his rover rests, but the 25 miles of moon that has been disturbed and surveyed by the Lunkohod 2 as well.
Despite very public skepticism towards his claims, we asked Garriott to play Nostradamus and predict what may one day occupy his supposed celestial real estate.
“If you build one atmosphere-domed enclosure, with a low enough gravitational force, then with only the power exertable [sic] with the human body, you’ll be able to fly under your own power,” he says. “And so flying around in domed habitats akin to Leonardo Da Vinci’s one-man flying machine, I think will be one of the most entertaining things to do on the moon.”
Unfortunately, before Garriott can break ground on his “FlyDome” (not bad, right?) he must first contend with the many cynics who cite the Outer Space Treaty‘s contention that no one person can rightfully own any extraterrestrial property.
“People can say whatever they want,” Explains Associate Professor Ram Jakhu of McGill University’s Institute of Air and Space Law. “But what is the legal basis of the argument? He needs a piece of paper that is supported by law.”
Jakhu insists that there is no governing body on the face of the earth that can grant Garriott such a document. “The land on which the rover lays does not belong to him, and it cannot belong to anyone. It’s a very simple thing.”
Garriott defiantly suggests that people on Earth have no right to place sanctions on any kind of lunar dealings that may or may not occur in the future. “None of us (lunar settlers) are going to care what the people on Earth say we should or should not be doing on the moon.”
Garriott, who amassed his fortune by creating the popular RPG series “Ultima,” paid $30 million to visit the International Space Station in 2008, where he spent 12 days. Is he the Richard Branson for the “Dungeons & Dragons” set?
“The thrill of exploration and discovery that I feel when I travel on the surface of the earth to Antarctica, to the deep sea, and even to space, is identical to the thrill that I feel and love to create when I build these virtual worlds.”
Take that, Space Treaty.
