Space for Rent

Space: the final frontier. Night and day, it is the one thing that that all human being share, aside from the approximately 1.4 percent of our genetic material that is common to all humans but not to chimpanzees. Enveloping us all in its vacuum-powered embrace, it is the massive and unwieldy momma of our own mother earth. And now, as advances in technology make the outer limits increasingly accessible (even the Canadians have a space program!), we must all brace ourselves for the impending big bang of twenty-first century consumerism: advertising in outer space.

Yes, that’s right. From the minds that brought us the awkward TD Banknorth Garden and the improbable McDonald’s All-American Basketball Team comes a new form of advertising, still in its early planning stages. Outsized billboards deployed into low earth orbit and visible to the naked eye could some day bring us the Eagles-inspired Jose Cuervo Tequila Sunrise and the largely unintended Chuck E. Cheese’s Partial Lunar Eclipse.

As if pop-up ads weren’t enough.

To their credit, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) interceded last week with a proposal to amend its regulations to ensure that it can properly enforce a law that prohibits “obtrusive” advertising in zero gravity. In a regulatory filing, the FAA said that, “Objects placed in orbit, if large enough, could be seen by people around the world for long periods of time.”

The FAA does not currently have the authority to enforce the existing ban, but the creation of a fleet of X-Wings is rumored in the works.

We applaud the FAA for its early effort at preventing orbiting atrocities that would destroy sunsets and hinder the work of the world’s astronomers, but the measure is not without its shortcomings.

To begin with, the FAA’s ban operates on the Reagan-esque presumption that the United States owns outer space. In point of fact, a unilateral U.S. ban on zero gravity advertising will have little effect in our globalizing world. What, for instance, is to prevent a publicity-hungry Bill Gates ’77 from spending his billions on an outer space advertising campaign based in Pyongyang? And even if the U.S. government were to somehow keep all American companies from advertising in the night sky, it would have a much more difficult time convincing foreign firms to play by its rules. The Nokia Autumnal Equinox, The Big Stella Artois Dipper.

Potential logistical hiccups aside, we feel that the FAA’s heart is in the right place with last week’s proposal. Because even with its potential benefits for airplane navigation (turn 15 degrees north when you see the Bud Light sign) and information dissemination (hi mom!), we would rather keep our skies free from the litter of “obtrusive” advertising.