re inflatable mile long space billboards was re vandalizing the sky yamauchi ces cwru edu brian yamauchi writes enzo research canon oz au enzo liguori writes what s new in my opinion friday april washington dc now space marketing is working with university of colorado and livermore engineers on a plan to place a mile long inflatable billboard in low earth orbit this sounds like something lowell wood would think of does anyone know if he s involved no the idea was suggested around here during discussions of possible near term commercial space activities one of the folks involved in those discussions a spacecraft engineer named preston carter passed the suggestion on to some entreprenurial types and mike lawson is apparently going ahead with it preston is now at llnl and is working with space marketing on the sensors that might be carried nasa would provide contractual launch services however since nasa bases its charge on seriously flawed cost estimates wn mar the taxpayers would bear most of the expense actually that sounds unlikely i don t know what the launch vehicle would be but i would expect it to go on a commercial launcher certainly not on the shuttle and the fraction of the cost paid to nasa for e g launch support would probably cover nasa s incremental costs pretty well this may look like environmental vandalism but mike lawson ceo of space marketing told us yesterday that the real purpose of the project is to help the environment the platform will carry ozone monitors he explained advertising is just to help defray costs this may be the purpose for the university of colorado people my guess is that the purpose for the livermore people is to learn how to build large inflatable space structures no as noted llnl is involved in lightweight sensor design per clementine and related programs i m sure folks around here would like to see a demonstration of a modern inflatable structure but after all the u s did the echo satellites long ago and an advertising structure would not be much closer to an inflatable space station than echo was or a parade balloon for that matter what do you think of this revolting and hideous attempt to vandalize the night sky it is not even april anymore while i happen to personally dislike the idea mostly because i ve got a background in astronomy it s hardly vandalism it would be a short lived intrusion on the night sky doing no permanent damage and actually hurting only a small subset of astronomers on the other hand it would certainly draw attention to space if this is true i think it s a great idea learning how to build structures in space in an essential step towards space development which unfortunately this is not likely to contribute much to if such a project also monitors ozone depletion and demonstrates creative use of partial private sector funding in the process so much the better is nasa really supporting this junk as far as i know it s a purely commercial venture and does anyone have any more details other than what was in the wn news blip how serious is this project is this just in the wild idea stage or does it have real funding i gather it is being very seriously discussed with possible advertisers commercial projects however generally don t get funding they get customers whether it will have customers remains to be seen are protesting groups being organized in the states not yet though if this project goes through i suppose the return of jeremy rifkin is inevitable nahh he s too busy watching for mutant bacteria to notice anything in the sky brian yamauchi case western reserve university yamauchi alpha ces cwru edu department of computer engineering and science jordin kare jtk s gov lawrence livermore national laboratory these are my personal views only and do not represent official statements or positions of llnl the university of california or the u s doe
