Dennis Hope has a pretty normal job. Is real estate agent. The different thing is the material with which it works: it is the land that it sells. He has been in business for more than forty years and is doing well, he managed to build a great company. None of its operations were aimed at property on our planet. What he has to offer are land on the Moon and on Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and their respective planets. He’s a galactic real estate agent. Cosmic seller.
How did he manage to make a fortune selling land on the Moon and other planets? With self-confidence, ingenuity and an excellent business strategy.
Everything was born from despair. Dennis Hope had had many jobs, he wanted to be an actor and was not in any casting and tried to make a living as a ventriloquist in shabby variety shows that toured small American towns. In 1980 he divorced his wife and lost the little he had. One night, while driving aimlessly, he saw for sale and rental signs on several properties. He told himself that if he had some properties to sell or at least to mortgage his problems would be fixed for a long time. Lost in his thoughts, he saw a radiant silhouette in the sky. full moon. He started laughing to himself. It seemed like such a good idea that he had to say it out loud, he had to listen to himself: on the Moon there were a lot of lands to sell. And he would take care of it.
Before launching his plan, he consulted the Treaty on the principles governing the activities of States in the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodiess, which is usually known as Space Treaty prepared by the UN. Article 2 states: “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, may not be the subject of national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use or occupation, or in any other way.” It speaks of nations, of countries, that cannot appropriate the Moon. Hope realized that does not mention individuals. So he interpreted it as a loophole and started selling. He took another precaution. He sent official letters to the UN and the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union. No one bothered to respond. Nobody took this – excuse the redundancy – lunatic seriously. That silence, that omission, the lack of prohibition on the matter, made Dennis Hope feel empowered to launch his business. Many – millions of people – felt the same as him and bought lunar plots from him throughout these four decades.
Among them three former presidents of the United States such as James Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Hollywood celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, George Lucas, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other more modest and local ones such as Tirri, the former member of the Fabulosos Cadillacs and cousin of Marcelo Tinelli, who at a lunch with Mirtha Legrand confessed that He had acquired four plots.
One of the keys to the business is the value of the land. Dennis can be accused of many things but not that his ambition blinds him. 24 dollars plus tax. Accessible to anyone. A figure worth taking a risk, making a joke or a very original gift. If he had wanted to get more money for each lot, the business would have failed. Thus he managed to sell many of little value. And it became millionaire. With this bizarre idea he raised more than 11 million dollars. According to him, he had around six million clients from 193 countries. He negotiated with almost 2,000 companies: “We sold 611 million acres of land on the Moon, 325 million acres on Mars, and between Venus and Mercury, about 125 million acres,” he said a decade ago.
Also according to him, the only source of this story, only 6 clients demanded their money back.
The purchase includes the property title, a map of its location on the lunar surface and a copy of the Galactic Constitution.
From time to time, taking advantage of various anniversaries of the Conquest of Space, it launches promotions and makes 2×1 or offers the second lot at half the value.
All these businesses were done through Lunar Embassy the company he founded and continues to own to this day.
Another example of its lack of ambition (excessive): it only trades with land located on the Moon and on some planets in the Solar System, it does not interfere with the rest of the universe.
The Sun, at some point, was a problem. There were several people who proclaimed themselves owners of the sun, including a woman in Galicia. But the most stubborn opponent related to the Sun was a Romanian scientist named Pop who, trying to prove Hope’s fraud, declared himself the owner of the sun and demanded that Hope and the Lunar Embassy pay him for the light it provided: he sent him an invoice. for 30 million dollars for the energy supplied for so many years. Hope’s response was forceful and quick: “Excuse me, Mr. Pop, after discussions with the lunar owners, we have decided that we do not want your energy. Please turn it off.”
There was an ancestor to Hope, a Chilean named Jenaro Gajardo, a Chilean lawyer who proclaimed himself owner of the Moon around the 1940s. He continued to hold it for years, until his death in 1987. In 1954 he went before a notary and made a document in which he claimed to be the sole owner of the Moon. They say that the reason was because he wanted to join a social club in Talca, his city, and that the requirement to be a member was to demonstrate that he owned at least one property through a public deed. Gajardo appeared in the media and told about his plans. History became complicated when Apollo 11 finally arrived in 1969. Gajardo emerged from the situation with elegance. He said that Richard Nixon had sent him a letter requesting authorization for the moon landing and that he provided it without problems. No investigator was ever able to see that letter.
Hope did not put the entire surface of the Moon up for sale. He says that the monuments (this is what the places where astronauts were or where there are marks of man’s passage are called), natural reserves and research areas are not subject to negotiation.
He started selling the land at Christmas 1980. He went to shopping centers and improvised a stand. Afterwards, it was a merit of his power of conviction, his ability to seduce, his salesmanship. Many were seduced and intrigued and bought that eccentric gift for the Christmas tree. He made about 600 sales. That fooled him, he thought everything was going to be easy. But in the following 15 years it only managed to locate, on average, 100 titles every twelve months. I couldn’t survive on that. Everything changed when the Internet arrived. Their sales skyrocketed. From 1995 onwards he dedicated himself exclusively to his lunar work.
When things started to go very well, another problem arose: competence. Many wanted to copy their business model. And sell the same as him. On the one hand, they discovered that it was not as simple as Dennis made it seem. On the other hand, those who managed to oil their business, took clients from Hope. He then tried to improve the offer, to make his business more attractive. It increased its digital campaigns, modified the design of property titles and offered new services.
Many of those who copied his model had previously been employees of him, they had managed some of the agencies that Lunar Embassy has in different parts of the United States and in more than twenty countries. Hope angrily called these people who left her to start their own business scammers.
In 2004 he announced the Lunar Constitution, the magna carta of the satellite of our planet. presented a new request to the UNthis time in order to be recognized as a nation. He did not wait for the response and began to broadcast lunar passportsdocuments that prove that someone is a lunar citizen. The conditions to become one are simple: you have to own land sold by Hope and then you have to buy the passport for another $21. He also sent an application to join the IMF. The organization was the only official entity that ever responded to a letter. He briefly rejected admission for not meeting the necessary conditions.
Dennis has 76 years. He plays golf, likes horseback riding and is the president of the Galactic Nation, although he has never managed to be received by any president. The branches around the world that sell land are their embassies. He says that he is in contact with other leaders from different places in the universe although they ignore him on Earth, but that for reasons of prudence he cannot reveal much more.
Dennis hasn’t given interviews in a long time. Correction: what it does not give are free interviews. If someone wants the first-hand account they must pay, something quite consistent with their modus operandi. The one who did speak in 2019 with Emilse Pizarro for a note published by Infobae was the CEO of Lunar Embassy, Christopher Lammar. What Emilse discovered is that despite the different last name – possibly the father uses a pseudonym – Lammar is the son of Dennis Hope, everything remains in the family.
Lunar Embassy continues to this day, 44 years after its creation, selling plots of land on the Moon.
“They called me, corrupt, a fraudster, who had concocted a fraud. They are wrong. I just had an idea and I followed itI worked to make it come true. Oh, and I also knew how to treat my clients,” says Dennis Hope. And he is somewhat right.
