How to Kickstart Space Exploration – Again

This week marks the 45th anniversary of the United States publicly landing a human representative on the moon. The first of about about a dozen such men visiting the moon and then a couple of years later – nothing. Now all we have is an orbiting space station. Just floating around in near earth orbit, looking at stuff on the ground with their powerful telescopes like a bunch of hi-tech voyeurs.

So the official reason is budget cuts. Well you can see how NASA is purely a revenue drain and not much of a revenue stream. Sure they come up with the occasional invention, CCD cameras, new kinds of shipping containers, ceramics, velcro, but they spend a lot more than they make. And some people think they may have made some under the table side deals to keep us at home. But now, especially with all of those new private companies actually launching useful missions, NASA needs a way to make space exploration profitable.

Well I found the inevitable answer. I was watching an old sci-fi movie the other day and there was a scene with the spaceship on its way to Mars. As the ship passed and you saw more of it, you saw advertising posters on the engines.

Well duh! it works for all of the sports venues, why not NASA? Every company from Target to TDAmeritrade has a baseball park with their name in it. And product placement in movies helps pay production costs for those.

So why doesn’t NASA start generating some revenue by selling advertising. Everyone does it. I’m sure its only a matter of time before the private companies that are supplying the ISS start selling ad space.

I can hear it now. “Today’s launch is brought to you by Coca-Cola. Buy it today in the new fizz proof zero gee pack.”

Of course I’m a Pepsi person myself. Anyway its just today’s thought.