Bang, Zoom, Ad

A company called Moon Publicity is offering to draw any logo you want on the surface of the moon so that it's visible from Earth. Using a process called Shadow Shaping, small robots would create ridges in the lunar surface that cast shadows in pre-determined shapes. That's right, for as little as $46,000, you can advertise your Twilight blog on the fucking moon. While this might seem like a crass and borderline unrealistic cash grab, Moon Publicity make a very good case for themselves on their website. For one thing, Shadow Shaping doesn't permanently alter the surface of the moon, so there's no damage done. But more importantly, this kind of space commercialization provided the kind of bottom-up financial motivation to take space travel out of the fickle and stingy hands of government. They argue that seemingly trivial space activity like advertising and tourism will pave the way for more serious endeavors like colonization and terraforming. It's a convincing pitch, though I wonder whether I'll feel as positive about the whole thing once the full moon tells me which attorney can get me a whiplash check GUARANTEED! More details here.