S’approprier la Lune ?. Une histoire longue et contrariée des prospections de l’économie lunaire, aux États-Unis et au-delà

This contribution intends to explain the long history of the efforts to constitute the Moon and its resources as appropriable goods, from the US astronautic field. The aim of the space property lawyers was to contradict one of the articles of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which defines the resources and celestial bodies of outer space as non-appropriable ?common heritage of mankind.? From the 1970s to the 2010s, American entrepreneurs of the lunar market economy constantly projected a liberal?and then neoliberal?vision of the ownership of the Moon, which is becoming more and more prevalent as a return to the Moon seems increasingly plausible in the 2020s. We will discuss these views of space capitalism without, however, taking the projects of this privatized economy of the Moon at face value, because the enthusiasm of the proponents of the entrepreneurial ?colonization? of the Earth?s natural satellite must be tempered by the still utopian character of this enterprise.