Privatising the moon may sound like a crazy idea but the sky’s no limit for avarice | Arwa Mahdawi

A free-market thinktank says it's time to start selling off plots of moon land' - we need to act now before the plundering starts

Ever heard of the overview effect? It was coined by a space writer called Frank White to describe how looking down at our little blue planet from above can create a shift in how astronauts think about Earth: all of a sudden you realise how fragile the Earth is and how important it is that we all work together to protect it. Looking at the Earth from afar you realise it is too small for conflict and just big enough for cooperation," the astronaut Yuri Gagarin said.

Alas, it looks like we needed to replace the overview effect with the avarice effect, because attitudes towards space seem to have shifted. Rather than making people imagine a better world, modern space exploration seems to be all about money, money, money. Elon Musk's SpaceX has been working with a Canadian startup on plans to launch satellites with billboards on them into space so that adverts can light up the night sky. No doubt some of those ads will be for space tourism: on Wednesday Virgin Galactic opened ticket sales to the public for the first time. And by the public" I mean that the small sliver of the public that can afford $450,000 for a joyride 300,000 feet above Earth.