I just arrived in LA after an unremarkable flight (which, ironically, is remarkable these days), and I’m in the hotel room waiting for the other Skeptologists to get back from various errands. Upon firing up teh intertoobs, I got a message from Fraser asking me to look into NASA’s call to make money through corporate sponsors. I’m all for it, of course, at least until Enzyte or someone wants see their logo on Mars… but then again, M&M/Mars may be perfect for this.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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April 1st, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Yeah, you almost had me, there.
cpb
April 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Mars: Apply directly to the forehead!
April 1st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Ah, I keep forgetting it’s April’s Fool (We don’t celebrate it in Argentina, but we do celebrate the Innocent’s day on December 28th). The only thing that refreshes me is the constant rickrolls I keep getting from Youtube.
April 1st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
April Fool’s jokes aside, we all know where space advertisements will lead, right?
http://www.concatenation.org/futures/maxo_lo.pdf
April 1st, 2008 at 7:15 pm
My personal advice: Create a logo for BA . It’s past due! . PZ has a squid, Skeptics the strange “s” , “outing” campaign the fancy “A” .
Why not put your regular cap on the “face on mars” and market it as BA’s logo! If you endorse it I’ll do my best to photoshop it into a logo.
I bet it would look better on mars than a “doritos”
April 1st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Of course, it would be completely unprofessional of the BA to leak to us which stories the Skeptologists will be investigating in the pilot episode, even though we would swear not to tell a soul if he did tell us.
April 1st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Hey, why doesn’t NASA sell advertising? I mean the Russians are selling trips to space? So why not sell advertising space on the external fuel tank? Possibly within view of the camera they have on it. It does not impair it’s functionality, and NASA really does need the money.
April 1st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
True enough, anion, the paint does weigh a bit, but the tank already has some paint on it to begin with, just paint the logo right on top of the primer from the get-go…
I read an article in the Washington Post last summer that was about Arecibo’s financial troubles and the director (I think it was) mentioned the idea of seeking corporate sponsorship. He said he thought it’d be great to have a Google logo on the dish!
What a frakkin’ brilliant idea! A tech company like Google would be a good fit and would gain lots of good press by saving the scope from the scrap heap.
The downside of the idea (even if it -IS- an April Fool’s joke) is that lots of corporations (even big ones) are feeling the pinch these days and are cutting back on unnecessary expenses. I haven’t a clue which companies would be likely to fund NASA launches… Toyota? ATT?
Rich
April 1st, 2008 at 8:36 pm
OK, now I’ve read the Universe Today link, April Fool’s it is!
I should click on the links before I post, really! My bad…
Rich
April 1st, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I was about to post, “Oh how horrid. This is akin to the national parks shaving the logos of corporate sponsors into bears…”
When it hit me.
On the flip side of this nice bit of humour, in ten years time I expect to see on forums, “Like when NASA announced it was going to start etching logos on Mars…like they don’t waste enough money covering up Roswell and faking to moon landings…”
April 1st, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Heh.
Seriously though, for years I’ve wondered why corporations with huge ad budgets don’t fund NASA launches. Race cars have logos all over them, why not rockets?
I hate the ad industry as much as the next guy, but if a rocket with “I’m lovin’ it!” painted on the side gets us to Mars sooner, why the hell not?
April 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
NASA: Just Launch It.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I am not talking about painting the whole tank in ads, just the areas visible to the cameras. Which would add a lot of weight, as NASA found out when they started launching the shuttle with a white external fuel tank.
Adding a couple micrograms of weight to the external fuel tank ain’t gonna make a whole lot of difference.
Or, instead of placing ads on the shuttle, put them on the countdown clock or other things the public sees when the shuttle launches, that won’t interfere with the launch. Have the media, refer to it as the Generic Brand countdown clock.
Or if NASA doesn’t want to pollute the area around the launchpad with ads, they can always have companies sponsor them. Just imagine it now:
“Coca-Cola is proud to sponsor the National Air and Space Program.”
April 1st, 2008 at 11:06 pm
“And now, the Firestone National Aeronautics and Space Administration is proud to present the launch of the Firestone Radial Space Shuttle Endeavour.”
…Yeah, that could go well. :-/
April 1st, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Too bad they’re *not* advertising. I’ve always thought they should decorate the space shuttles like race cars. That could put a dent in their budget problems, and leave some room for *actual* science. Pizza Hut was glad to pay a cool million for their logo on a Russian rocket.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:56 pm
[...] Link: Zobacz [...]
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:00 am
This reminds me of an old joke (supposedly dating back to the Moon Race):
A panicked NASA employee contacts the President of the United States:
- Mr. President, the Russians are painting the Moon in red!
- That’s not a problem. Tell me when they have finished.
After some time the same employee calls again:
- Mr. President, the Russians have finished.
- Good. Now, send our boys up there with some white paint. They simply have to write “Coca-Cola”.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am
Well, with the age of Astronauts getting up there, a 30 year old Space Shuttle, why not? I’m sure the good folks at Viagra could come up with something…
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 am
Phil -
I’ve come up with a great way for you to make money on your Mars face logo cap advertising – sublease the space and the face could be eating a Mars bar!
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:44 am
This post went up at 5:15 pm, WAY after the April Fools deadline of noon, in blatant disrespect (and probably ignorance) of this long established and hallowed rule.
Who’s the fool now, huh?
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:50 am
This is much better than the silly April Fools jokes that folks were trying to pull off at work yesterday. I didn’t read it until this morning so you had me going for a little bit.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:54 am
It’s an April Fools Day joke, thank goodness.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:07 am
I understand they are using military laser weapons to generate the logo on the surface of Mars. An excellent use of our Defense Dept budget and, better yet, clear demonstration of US capability while allowing our troops to safely practice their skills. First project is an advertisement for Bear Stearns and Countrywide Finance. Huzzah for George Bush and his cronies.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:16 am
Actually, I remember a toss-off comment between 1985 and 1990 on the NASA direct feed (back in the days when a TVRO dish strictly meant C-Band or Ku). Mission Control zoomed in on a corporate logo mounted to some equipment in the shuttle bay, and someone made a comment on-air about advertisement. A wry comment, like Robert Young’s statement about going back to water landings when they had trouble opening the Columbia’s door. Still . . .
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 am
Honestly why are people so upset about this? I’d much rather a mars bar rover than none.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
I think it would be cool if the astronauts wore sponsor patches like racecar drivers do. Imagine watching the astronauts work in the name of their sponsors into their talks (”that Frito-Lay lander handled like a dream”). The money from commercials could be big too. Imagine UPS sponsoring a Mars landing (”Brown gets you there”). Can you paint a rocket brown?
I started joking but the more I think about it, this could work.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
Good satire has to be subtle, and just close enough to reality to be believable. As has been pointed out, the Russians have been selling advertising space on their rockets for years, so “why not NASA, too” isn’t that far fetched.
Here’s another one, pitting two routers (Cisco vs. Black and Decker) in head-to-head tests.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:33 am
@anion:
“Or, instead of placing ads on the shuttle, put them on the countdown clock or other things the public sees when the shuttle launches, that won’t interfere with the launch. Have the media, refer to it as the Generic Brand countdown clock.”
How about “Lunching Off Into Space: Stephen Colbert Cool Ranch Doritos’s Mars Mission Crunchdown Clock”.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:40 am
@Daniel:
“Honestly why are people so upset about this? I’d much rather a mars bar rover than none.”
My guess would be that old stereotype that sponsorship = sell out. In other words, sponsorship in many peoples eyes would probably be the first step of NASA focusing their service to their sponsors and away from the general public, who are supposed to benefit from the science works and advancements by the agency.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:18 am
You know, the russians/this or that company are going to beam a huge advert on the Moon with lasers. If somebody came up a sick idea to beam an advert to the northern (or southern) stratosphere to create artificial aurora borealis/australis, that might picque my interest on the 1st of April.
But I had better things to think about then. It was the birthday of my cat, he’s 3 years old now, and still almost as crazy as the day I adopted him at 9 weeks. He doesn’t give a about space or people. He just adores the sounds of Saturn and Jupiter (the sounds of the magnetic fields modified to audible wavelengths), and for some reason all I play with my guitar, but that’s because heavy distortion seems to make him very sleepy indeed.
May 25th I won’t miss, though. Let’s hope this time a polar lander works.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Two weeks ago Rolling Rock, the beer, ran commercials in prime time outlining how they were going to use a laser to project an image of their logo on the face of the soon-to-be-full moon.
Perhaps they were just getting a head start on April 1? Or, if no one in the rest of the country saw these ads, maybe they knew their only in California audience all too well.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
IRT to the commercializing of space
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
IRT to Galactic Cosmic Rays and low standards of journalism see the following:
http://www.newcomensengine.com/2008/04/end-of-professional-journalism.html
April 6th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Hadn’t we better ask the Mysterons what they think before we start writing all over their planet?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:26 am
The biggest clue, I thought, was the line about ads on Mars being visible both to orbiters and to ground-based scopes.
To be visible from Earth (even with a powerful scope), a logo on Mars would need to be hundreds of kilometres across. But anything larger than about 50 km would not fit into the field of view of any of the orbiters.
Still, it’s a fun idea.