Robots to brand the moon?
An inventor wants to create ads on the moon by using robots to plow the lunar dust into enormous corporate messages visible from Earth.
Speaking of the eclipse, an inventor named David Kent Jones wants to use robots to turn the Earth's only natural satellite into a giant ad.
Jones' scheme is to use lunar robots to plow moon dust into "logos, domains [sic] names, memorials or even portraits...You can even carve your initials in a heart to impress your sweetheart."
Imagine looking up and seeing a Nike swoosh among the stars.
A Salt Lake City company called Moon Publicity says its Shadow Shaping Technology would involve robots pushing the dust into furrows to create shadows that form images when viewed from far away.
The firm may be having a lark, but it says it's accepting bids for ad space on 44 lunar regions starting at $46,000.
Jones isn't the first to dream of selling lunar ad space, as CNET reported in 2006. Others have tried selling real estate on the moon, or laid claim to Martian properties.
But at least Jones has a conceptual video.
Nonetheless, the engineering challenge of getting robots to the moon, deploying them properly, and then getting them to successfully comb over 500 miles of dust (akin to the size of Mare Imbrium) into something recognizable from Earth is, to say the least, staggering.
And it will remain staggering for some time.
This ignores the question of whether it's right to make a mere shill out of what Percy Bysshe Shelley once described as an "orbèd maiden."
Moon Publicity's justification for the branding? The campaign would spur space travel, which is needed due to "the inevitable extinction of the human species."
The company admits people won't like it.
As one You Tube commentator said, "You are not writing on the freaking moon and that's final."