space advertising of two developments have brought these type of activities back to the forefront in first in february the russians deployed a m reflector from a progress vehicle after it had departed from the mir space station while this banner reflector was blank npo energia was very active in reporting that future banner reflectors will be available to advertisers who could use a space based video of their logo or ad printed on the banner in a tv commercial as filmed from the mir the second development has been that space marketing inc the same company responsible for merchandising space on the conestoga booster and comet spacecraft is now pushing the environmental billboard as laid out by smi chief engineer dr ron humble of the university of colorado space laboratory and preston carter of the lawrence livermore national laboratory the environmental billboard is a large inflatable outer support structure of up to x meters advertising is carried by a mylar reflective area deployed by the inflatable frame to help sell the concept the spacecraft responsible for maintaining the billboard on orbit will carry ozone reading sensors to continuously monitor the condition of the earth s delicate protective ozone layer according to mike lawson head of smi furthermore the inflatable billboard has reached its minimum exposure of days it will be released to re enter the earth s atmosphere according to imi as the biodegradable material burns it will release ozone building components that will literally replenish the ozone layer the remaining spacecraft will monitor the atmosphere for another year before it too re enters and burns up and adds to the ozone supply this would not be a cheap advertisement costing at least several millions of dollars exact costs were not available but smi estimates that market exposure would be x that of the people who watched the superbowl where a second advertising unit cost since smi is located in atlanta georgia it is being promoted as being available in time for the opening of the summer olympics in atlanta but back to brian s questions 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 see above as for serious if they can get m or so my estimate of for development costs and a flight unit plus m for a launch then it s probably real they are claiming to tailor the orbit to overfly specific locations at specific times for optimum advertising impact so they probably can t piggy back upon someone else s planned launch and will have to buy a dedicated launch that s a m cost they need to raise right there and there will probably be some legal challenges to this as well note there is one potential legal challenge to smi on the use of launch vehicle advertising already while i don t think the legal challenges would win out and yes i am an amateur astronomer and no i don t really like the idea of this additional light pollution but i know of no prohibition of it the legal challenges and court fights would probably remove any positive aspects of the advertising i can imagine several ways to make the advertisers look like louts for doing this which would change positive market exposure to negative market exposure and negate the space advertising advantage would you spend m to look like an idiot and light pollution might not be too bad if it s in a low enough orbit and it relies upon reflected light only it would only be visible for a short time just after local dusk and before dawn for maximum market exposure you want to have it visible just after dusk minimizing impact on astronomy since that s the time of worse seeing due to day night thermal turbulence it might still be a problem but perhaps there are ways to mitigate this as for having real funding none that i can identify there were about expressions of interest made on the conestoga advertising opportunity but that included curious folks and was for only a commitment i haven t heard of any serious funding for this but i m sure they are shopping the venture around looking for some money in order to flesh out the concept some more but i am confident there are no firm or paying customers at this time and if anybody wants to cross post this to sci astro please be my guest i don t have posting privileges to that area or at least i don t think i do wales larrison space technology investor maximus wb
