Moon Land For Sale, unbelievable, but true.

One Acre of Land on the Moon: $29.99.

Stake your claim!

— Unsolicited e-mail, courtesy of LunarLandRush.com, May 16

Sean Daly, real-estate attorney, Gosselin & Associates: " Who owns the moon? The seller has to show ownership. If you can’t show ownership, you can’t be selling something. You have a title examiner go to the Registry of Deeds and look up ownership. If all of a sudden you find out John Doe is selling property that Jim Smith owns, then obviously you’re going to stop the deal in its tracks.

" This could be more of a status thing: ‘I own a piece of the moon.’ That might be their argument, that they’re selling an intellectual piece of the moon as opposed to an actual piece. It doesn’t make too much sense to me. I’m not going to run out and buy a piece. I don’t think I’ll be going up there any time soon. "

Philip Clayton, recently a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School: " Theologically, the primary ‘ownership’ [of the moon] is God’s. Adam and Eve were tenants in the Garden of Eden, not owners. Still, the first humans were placed on the earth ‘to cultivate it and keep it.’ I suppose the moon’s landowners will be required to show good stewardship over their land — though I’m not quite sure what it means to try to preserve the moon’s ecosystem or to avoid pollution of its air and seas. If they grow overly wealthy, and if they shut out the poor among them (a harsh move on the moon, one presumes!), then they’ll have to watch out for the biblical injunctions against wealth or ‘mammon’ and against mistreatment of the poor. But at $29.99 per acre, it doesn’t sound as if an overabundance of wealth will be a problem in the near term. "

Dr. Steve Maron, American Astronomical Society: " I think this has been done in the past. When I was a kid, a member of the Junior Astrologer Club, people did stuff like this. There’s something called a ‘quitclaim’: the person selling simply renounces any interest in that plot of land. But I haven’t heard this one lately. It’ll be interesting to see if there are any courts or attorneys that agree with them.

" I did hear that a few years ago, when NASA crashed something on the moon, there was a complaint from a particular Indian tribe who had some belief that the moon did belong to them. Professional astronomers don’t recognize any individual ownership of anything on the moon. In fact, I believe there is international law on this subject. [The 1979 United Nations Moon Treaty: ‘The moon shall be used by all ... for peaceful purposes.’]

" I think it would be nice to have a special relationship to a spot on moon, but you can do that without owning it, just as you and your wife may have a special spot, the place you met, even though it might be a park. "

" The Best Things in Life are Free, " from the 1927 musical Good News:

The moon belongs to everyone

The best things in life are free,

The stars belong to everyone

They gleam there for you and me.