Cassini-Huygens: Titan

There is something plain thrilling about seeing a photograph of another planet. It makes imagining stepping onto that surface all the easier. There are so many important things we could be spending this money on instead of space exploration, but it is really hard to remember that when you see pictures like this one recently beamed back from Titan.

Right now, the recent success of Space Ship 1 makes the commercialization of at least orbital space seem almost inevitable. Mind you: that means manned commercialization of orbital space — commercialization of orbital space via machine is a fait accompli.

One wonders what this means. How long will it be before Pepsi puts billboards on the moon? Will the first permanent station off the home planet be a Comfort Inn? Does space exploration require that we allow a massive land-grab on the moon, Mars, and Titan? Capitalism only works when there is authoritative support of property. How long before the “ownership society” catches on to this? Is it time for some creative adverse possession?

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3 Comments

  1. Posted 1/18/2005 at 12:39 am | Permalink

    I like to think about inter-planetary intellectual property licensing. That is, you can imagine if necessity is the mother of invention, then licensing back of IP (especially patents) may be the unseen fortune in space.

    Also, there have already been a few advertising forrays that included putting “Pizza Hut” logos on certain rocket shells… let’s see if I can find anything… Ah, google:

    Pizza Hut Puts Pie in the Sky with Rocket Logo
    http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/pizza_hut_990930_wg.html

  2. Posted 1/18/2005 at 10:04 am | Permalink

    Thanks! I’d forgotten that Pizza Hut was actually successful in doing this. At the time, PepsiCo (Pizza Hut’s parent company until 99, I think) had been courting NASA to launch a Pepsi rocket, but without success. They did film a television commercial on Mir in 97, though.

    Using the moon as a billboard is also not exactly an original idea.

  3. Posted 1/18/2005 at 10:08 am | Permalink

    Oh, and it’s Budget Suites that is doing the first space hotel, in theory.

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