Last year J.H. Huebert discussed a new ad model of placing advertisements in space.
While this idea has received praises in the past, it has also been poo-pooed by a wide range of individuals, including those against the commercialization of space.
And they are not alone, as the State both directly and indirectly stymies entrepreneurial activity in the cosmos.
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I think I will just repeat my comment from the previous thread:
I suppose you could stick a billboard in space. I don’t think you could complain, however, when I use a high power ground based laser to destroy it. That technology exists, by the way. The Chinese are using it, not to destroy, but to render inoperable American spy satellites.
So go ahead. Put up a billboard. Just don’t count on it being there more than an hour or so.
I’d complain. I bet you’d complain, too, if I used a laser (or whaterver) to blow up your billboard on the side of the street/highway, your garage door, your mailbox, etc. etc.
Brent:
Let’s put this in context. I purchased 15+ acres up in the Tennessee mountains. Now I actually didn’t NEED all that land. 1 acre would have been sufficient. The rest was to keep potential neighbors at a distance and preserve all my scenic views. I will be damned if I am going to sit back and let them pollute my view with space billboards. Hopefully, sanity will prevail on this issue for a change.
So you presume the billboard can be seen from your land and will take some enjoyment away from your backyard sky view?
Lol, okay, I’ll bite — How is this different from someone putting up a tall, flashy billboard a mile or so away from your land, which similarly can be seen from your land?
Hmmm… If such bilboard is placed on someone’s property (and we’re not bound by a home-owners’ association), I don’t think anyone has a problem with that. However, placing it on a baloon right above my property… there we have a problem.
Even if you don’t believe in usque ad coelum principle, you can agree that we at least have easement rights over and under our property — otherwise, people could make our lives miserable by building over and under our land. We have that easement for the space above us… Personally, I have nothing against powerful beams of lights that shoot straight above the Universal Studios… However, imagine that Pepsi decides to laser-beam their logo every time there is a full moon… Don’t you think that Coca-Cola would beam word “sucks” in the middle of it… I mean, would companies even try to do it… Seriously…
Ha.
It is unlikely that the billboard would be placed over your estate. Then what?
It’s all about perspective I guess. Why we humans like an unobstructed view of the sky is anybody’s guess. Perhaps in some distant eon when mankind conquers space like he traveled the seven seas, and views space as a dark, cold, empty void (is that an oxymoron?), we may have a different view. We might welcome the lights of billboards surrounding a planet much like pioneers welcomed the light of civilization after traversing the wilderness.
Plus, the space billboards are scarcely an interference with earth-bound property beyond injuring the eye of the beholder. I guess the real definition of property is what you can take and hold. Its not worth the bother of defending our private airspaces since most people don’t have flight capability, and chasing an air trespasser off your air would be more time and money than it is (currently) worth. But let someone walk onto my land.. unleash the hounds!! What we need for our private air is some kind of suicidal bird or mini flying attack dog which are unleashed at the sight of a stranger (like the postman!).
Good anecdote here.. a family member of mine recently (within five years) bought a farm in the midwest. He was peeved when almost immediately, the plot next to the farm he bought was sold, and a cheap, quick house thrown up right in his southern view! Disgraceful blot on the landscape! What was worse, was the new house had a blazing lamp post in the front yard that was never turned off all night. How did my relative deal with his unwanted neighbors? He got a hold of a tree transplanter, and started moving trees to the property line en masse. Solution, in a decade or so, that annoying light will no longer be visible, and neither will the house.
The ironic part is that the new residents defaulted on the house almost within the year.
Heh.
Fortunately I have a few million trees on my property, so thankfully don’t have to worry about any twits like that.
The logistics of putting up a space billboard would be tremendous. If you put up the billboard in close earth orbit, it is only going to be seen in a particular spot for about five minutes, twice a day. On the other hand, if you place the billboard in geosyncronous orbit, you would probably have to make the billboard TEN miles square to have anybody be able to actually read it on Earth! Fortunately, that seems to make a space billboard an unprofitably, and therefore impracticle option.
Brent:
Of course, somebody COULD put up such a billboard. My location in a sparsely populated and remote area fortunately makes a billboard of that type unlikely. Who is going to put up a billboard that only 1 or 2 people are ever likely to see?
It was mentioned above that some people prefer a crowded, modern view. I prefer a natural one. I went to much trouble to obtain one. There is a principle that a person has a right to peaceful use of their private property. Cluttering up the sky with billboards seems to be invasive of that right. Fortunately, the impracticality of the idea likely will make this whole issue moot. I think if an advertiser DID have that much money to spend, he would likely use a more assured means, such as national television and radio advertising to do the trick.
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