inflatable mile long space billboards was re vandalizing the sky in article c t k db research canon oz au enzo research canon oz au enzo liguori writes what s new in my opinion friday april washington dc space billboards is this one the spinoffs we were promised in science fiction writer robert heinlein published the man who sold the moon which involved a dispute over the sale of rights to the moon for use as billboard nasa has taken the firsteps toward this hideous vision of the future observers were startled this spring when a nasa launch vehicle arrived at the pad with schwarzenegger painted in huge block letters on the side of the booster rockets space marketing inc had arranged for the ad to promote arnold s latest movie well if you re going to get upset with this you might as well direct some of this moral outrage towards glavcosmos as well they pioneered this capitalist application of booster adverts long before nasa sign of the times a sony logo on a soyuz launcher 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 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 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 what do you think of this revolting and hideous attempt to vandalize the night sky it is not even april anymore if this is true i think it s a great idea learning how to build to build structures in space in an essential step towards space development and given that freedom appears to be shrinking towards the vanishing point i question whether nasa s space station is going to provide much if any knowledge in this area especially if a design such as faget s wingless orbiter is chosen 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 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 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 brian yamauchi case western reserve university yamauchi alpha ces cwru edu department of computer engineering and science
