In 2009, David Kent Jones proposed “shadow shaping” / “shadow farming” technology, in which robots would alter the moon’s surface in such a way that shadows from sunlight on the moon would form company logo’s and advertising messages.
This method, however, was clearly banned by 2005 legislature on “obtrusive space advertising” (see: 49 U.S.C. 70109a) and potentially violates the “Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” (that prohibits “disruption of the existing balance of its environment”).
The Moon Treaty of 1979 specifically bans “altering the environment of celestial bodies”
To advertise on the Moon, its environment would have to remain unharmed.
The Moon Treaty of 1979 specifically bans “altering the environment of celestial bodies”
But in a legal sense, how am I, a private individual, bound by the Moon Treaty of 1979?
If I did choose to go and carve my name into the Moon, who would punish me? Unless the United States (or whatever country I happen to be in) followed up the signing of the Moon Treaty by the passing of a law which prohibits citizens from carving their name into the moon, there's nothing they can charge me with, right?
edit: Actually now I come to look it up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty) the Moon Treaty wasn't even signed by the United States. In fact, it was signed by only thirteen countries, none of which has the capabilities of getting anywhere near the moon.
Yes, the Moon Treaty was never ratified by the US. I think it's worth noting to show both the historical precedent of respect for the preservation of the Moon's environment, and that such respect is widespread throughout the world.
and that such respect is widespread throughout the world.
By thirteen out of nearly two hundred countries?
Let's face it, nobody actually wants someone to burn a huge logo onto the moon. And that's okay, because nobody can afford to burn a huge logo onto the moon anyway. In terms of other uses, there's some reasonable disagreement -- for instance the Moon Treaty says that no private individual should be allowed to own any land on the Moon, whereas I think that granting land rights on the Moon to whoever can manage to set up a permanent settlement there is a great idea.
I would disagree with the statement "nobody can afford to burn a huge logo onto the Moon". If the only constraint is who can "afford" it, the advertising world has some pretty deep pockets.
How would you do it, exactly? Bear in mind that any logo visible on the Moon from Earth would have to be roughly the size of... oh, say, the United States.
I for one would lobby my government to stop this from happening. When I look in to the infinite wonder of space I don't want to see a fucking coke logo slowly going by.
To quote from Sagan's The Dragons of Eden where he speculates on the Evolution of Human Intelligence:
"A typical example of the occasional resistance mustered by intuitive thinking against the clear conclusions of analytical thinking is D.H. Lawrence's opinion of the nature of the moon: "It's no use telling me it's a dead rock in the sky! I know it's not." Indeed the moon is more than a dead rock in the sky. It is beautiful, it has romantic associations..."
I understand and appreciate your sentiments. America and Australia would have been a lot more "beautiful" without the European settlers ruining it.
But in a strange way mankind needs to move "forward" "whatever" that means. We need to colonize the Solar system, then the galaxy and then spread to the other galaxies.
Governments prefer to fight religious wars by spending orders of magnitude more than the NASA budget, because it is easier to garner votes with war. It appears as if free enterprise is the only force that will take man beyond the gravity well of this planet.
It is natural to dislike crass advertising. But we should remember that even Google is just an advertising company. Without Google we would have been worse off. Yes worse off even without SEO, SEM and so on.
The situation is not black and white. Formula 1 racers are covered in Ads. But we still watch the games and enjoy them too. The moon is our common heritage. We cannot let it turn into an eyesore. But it will some day be mined, some day, there will a number of ads, whether you or I or another person objects to it will hardly matter. What we can do is strike a balance between growth and beauty.
It will no longer be as beautiful as it was. But as a civilization we will be better off. If you consider we are better off today than in the stone age. That itself is subjective. But this world belongs to 6.5 billion people. It is for them to decide quality of life v/s beauty by abstaining from exploitation.
We have taken steps like having sanctuaries, of leaving Antarctica alone and so on... Maybe we will do something similar to the moon as well. Maybe no development will be permitted on the visible side of the moon at all. It does not matter. Maybe no structure larger than the limit of visual acuity will be permitted.
Free enterprise abiding by the laws we give to ourselves has to take us beyond the shackles of this planet. Let us be pragmatic. Every penny that the Space industry will make will take us off this planet... not in hundreds... not in millions... but in billions...
America and Australia would have been a lot more "beautiful" without the European settlers ruining it.
If we're going to play that game, then Australia would have been a helluva lot more beautiful if the Aborigines hadn't got to it either. As soon as they showed up they killed off most of the awesomest wildlife (goodbye, Diprotodon) and burned a helluva lot of the forests down.
I would go onto say we should not have not moved out of Africa at all.
Most people would agree that we humans somehow end up making places less beautiful by own standards by inhabiting them and exploiting them.
But we NEED to do it. We can just ensure that we restrain ourselves from crossing a commonly accepted limit. I had never suggested turning moon into a billboard in the sky.
Think of it more like rock painting made by a caveman. in certain restricted parts of the moon.
When I look in to the infinite wonder of space I don't want to see a fucking coke logo slowly going by.
This occurs in one of the red dwarf novels. After the invention of FTL travel, coke pays a astro-engineering company to trigger a series of precisely positioned supernovae to create a burning message across the sky, proclaiming: "DRINK COKE."
As it is visible 24 hours a day for five weeks across the whole planet, they are confident this will finally win them the war against pepsi.
Hmph. Ten years after it occurred to me, someone else has this idea in their head. At the time, Microsoft was dominant and branching into everything. I figured they'd deploy microrobots on the Moon that people could drive around for a fee. I called it Microsoft Moon.
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/so-no-microsoft-moo...
SpaceX has brought down the cost of space travel by an order of magnitude. If Ad Astra succeeds in their VASIMR effort, they will bring it down further. Many things you could only dream about in the past will soon be economically viable.
Just because something is possible does not mean we need to do it. And that is something I figured today!!!
Microsoft? Why would you have (even in jest!) thought Microsoft might do anything of the sort? Someone else would have to do it successfully first, then they'd copy their business model.
This was before Google even existed. It really was a vastly different world when Microsoft seemed like a juggernaut getting into everything. And I think right around then they had created the precursor to what everyone now thinks of as just Google Earth. MS had something like it first -- I forget its name, though.
Sure, I remember that too. I guess MS did seemed to headed in a stellar direction circa 1996 or 97. To me, they lost their shine as the internet picked up steam... I'd say 92-96 was the end of the golden age of the desktop computer as envisioned in the 80s. Just three years later, everything was dramatically different in a way only the savviest people would have expected in 1990.
The comments on HN have made me wiser. I have decided to abandon this idea altogether. Sorry for wasting ur time. Let me explore some more constructive ideas...
You bring up a very important aspect of quality control. i.e. How to prevent it from turning into a restroom wall. Of course it will go through an editorial process.
Something magical has prevented HN from turning into a rest room wall when many others have failed. "Processes" and communities can make that magic happen. Anyway as I said elsewhere I have abandoned the idea :).
I love the community here... Validating an idea can get over in a few hours especially if the decision is to toss it away...
Yeah, HN has a pretty narrow focus and has a conscious effort to maintain its quality.
OTOH, reddit, digg, 4chan, pretty much every newspaper with comments - they all turn into hives of idiocy and depravity really quick (although 4chan might have simply started there. :X)
There's a Robert Heinlein book where having a logo on the moon is postulated. Anyone remember what that was called? Anyway, this is no way a new idea, and it's a terrible idea too.
These are GTO numbers... but the bots r tiny in Kgs I guess...
The glxp teams share the rockets i guess... The robots must be cheap at least in terms of materials used... in relative magnitude to the launch... I could be wrong. Engineering the bots does not get paid apart from the learnings and future opportunities...
This method, however, was clearly banned by 2005 legislature on “obtrusive space advertising” (see: 49 U.S.C. 70109a) and potentially violates the “Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” (that prohibits “disruption of the existing balance of its environment”).
The Moon Treaty of 1979 specifically bans “altering the environment of celestial bodies”
To advertise on the Moon, its environment would have to remain unharmed.