British doctor starts 'selling mars' for £27million

Dr Phil Davies, 49, from Hampshire, claims to have a "legally well constructed claim to land on planet Mars" that could be ratified by the United Nations by next year.  Through the

website mars.sale, he is offering people the chance to buy 10 acres of Mars for just one US cent - giving the 144.8 km, squared neighbour of earth a total value of $35.8m (£26.99m). So far

1,100 people have chipped in, meaning 11,000 acres of Mars have "been sold". But Dr Davies and his team claim the action is not about cash, but safeguarding the future of space and

improving the Outer Space Treaty (OST) - the only current law governing activities in space - which he says cannot tackle planned mining of asteroids for platinum and who owns them, or even

taking nuclear weapons into space. Dr Davies told Express.co.uk the project was to expose how the OST was not tight enough to stop individuals laying claim to celestial bodies and

preventing a cosmic "land grab and gold rush". He said: "This is purely to tighten up the loose laws around ownership of land in space, because at the moment we are allowed to

do that, and we should not have been able to do that. Ultimately we will hand it over to the United Nations and that is in our code of conduct. "We have created the first legally

difficult to challenge claim on land in space." He claims to have used laws over ownership of difficult to reach places on Earth, such as the North and South Poles, when the prospective

owner has never been there. The medic claims to have got round the OST by bringing benefit to Mars without even going there. He and a team have been firing high-powered lasers at Mars to

give it "warmth and light" in the hope it will release carbon dioxide to begin terraforming. A quick search of the internet shows there are a number of websites all laying claim to

be able to sell plots on Mars and other celestial bodies in our solar system, including our Moon. They include buy mars.com, moonestates.com and lunarland.com. Dr Davies claimed his

initiative was the only one with a reasonable prospect of being recognised as the true owner - something that has yet to be confirmed by any official body. He said: "Such things are

normally shallow gimmicks with no associated importance - but not ours. This is a world first and will be huge in 2017." The mars.sale website says: "Now that gets you a legal

claim to land on Mars that is one thousand times cheaper than most of those novelty Moon/Mars deeds that are being sold out there! Please do make your own comparisons and read further into

all this and you will see ours is the strongest and only truly legal claim to Land on Mars." Dr Davies added: "After genuine high-level negotiation with UN officials we are now

just awaiting the agreement of a COPUOS member to propose to committee that our claim be appraised for Right to Due Process.  "The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague stand

officially ready to arbitrate.  "The Deputy Secretary General of Permanent Court of Arbitration advises us that such a claim/dispute was foreseen by them, hence they have bespoke

'rules for arbitration on disputes concerning outer space activities'". "So, is this for real or a scam? According to the Lunar Embassy website, their legal basis for

ownership is that 'one can become the legal owner of an extraterrestrial body, if you are the first one who claimed it, and that is the Lunar Embassy'.” "So, we’ll let you

decide for yourself if this is real or a scam."