Minden businessman to be interviewed on "The Conan O'Brien Show"

Dennis Hope, head of a Gardnerville business that sells real estate on the moon, is flying to New York today for a guest appearance on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."

"Last September, I asked my marketing director to send my bio to all the major talk shows," Hope said. "I get six minutes on the air."

The talk show follows "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on NBC at 12:30 a.m.

Through his Lunar Embassy office in Gardnerville and an international network, Hope has been selling property on the moon and other celestial bodies for 23 years.

It's a good bet O'Brien will bring the topic up.

"Two former U.S. presidents, physicians, scientists, politicians and part of England's royal family have all bought property," he said. "Everyone has their own reasons."

He said a lot of people think it's a novelty, but more than 1,300 corporations, including mining companies and Hilton and the Marriott (hotel chains), have purchased property on the moon.

"Some people are interested in purchasing land for launch facilities," Hope said. "They want to use the moon as a base for fixing satellites."

A ventriloquist from the time he was 10 years old, Hope readily admits that he was never a conformist.

"I was a product of the 1960s and when I started doing this, it was tongue-in-cheek," he said. "A way to stick it to the establishment."

A springboard diver, he was attending Linfield College in Oregon on a scholarship and in 1968, a political science class inspired him. One of the topics was the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which said no nation could have sovereign control over heavenly bodies.

"I remembered that and in 1980 when I was getting a divorce and hadn't worked for over a year, I got a copy of that treaty," he said. "Nowhere did it mention individuals.

"I filed a declaration of ownership with the United Nations, the United States and the former USSR for the Moon of Earth, the other eight planets (in the solar system) and their moons."

He said he wants to sell the property and requested that those governments advise him on whether there were any legal ramifications. No one did.

The going price for a piece of the moon has risen in the past couple years because so much of his business is Internet-generated, he said.

Early in the enterprise, he sold 1,777.58-acre tracts of moonscape for $15.99 each. Now, one acre costs $19.99.

The Lunar Embassy is at 1506 Highway 395, Gardnerville. For more information, call (800) 586-2729.