NASA to go into the space business?
In the future, astronauts will travel to the moon and beyond in spacecraft painted with advertising slogans, if a California Congressman has his way. At present, NASA is not permitted to carry advertising: it is a publicly-funded organisation, and selling advertising space is a commercial business. But Congressman Ken Calvert …
Bad Taste?
Possible sponsors here:
http://www.blackcatfireworks.ltd.uk/
WTF
And who, pray, do they believe will see these adverts? The mind boggles; it really does!
Figures.
Calvert's embroiled in a money scandal. Seems only natural that he'd come up with another way to get kickbacks.
http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/calvert.php
Reminds me of
Reminds me of this joke from a few years ago. Well, at least it was a joke THEN:
http://www.fugly.com/pictures/1752/nasa.html
Marketers are already frothing
I saw something about this in a marketing newsletter and blog which I receive for some odd reason.
http://jaystandish.blogspot.com/2007/04/marketings-next-frontier.html
and a follow-up at
http://jaystandish.blogspot.com/2007/04/mother-nature-taking-over-is-your.html
I'm not sure about the Rock DJ reference, but I'm ready to send my trash to the moon!
Oh god....
I just had a horrible inner vision of the next condom adverts.
Weight issues
Paint has weight. The paint to slather an advertisement big enough to be worthwhile while it's sitting on the launch pad would have to weigh at least 5lbs - and even then, the only people that would see it legibly are prettymuch watching the launch on TV, and are only going to see the 45 seconds before the launch, whereupon it becomes VERY difficult to see any sort of symbology on the shuttle. Look at the going rate for putting science materials on a space flight - it costs a HELL OF A LOT MORE to put 1lb of experiment into space than any advertiser is going to be willing to pay for 45 seconds of TV time to an audience consisting primarily of geeks, who are notoriously unmoved by advertising anyway.
