07/16/98

You know, I once read that if you had a powerful enough laser beam, you could shine it at the moon and produce a dot only a couple meters wide. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. What's more impressive about this little fact is the advertising opportunities.

In today's age, we have massive amounts of computing power. Computers that can do trillions of calculations per second can realistically model physics and weather. Even Altavista has a whole bunch of Alpha Digital computers linked together to run its search engine.

So, I think some company should combine these two technologies to harness the ultimate advertising space: the moon.

If you got enough lasers in a relatively cloud-free area of the world, you could create any image you want on the moon. The fantastic computers could calculate for distances and diffraction of the Earth's atmosphere. Even better yet, you could mount this aparatus on the ailing Mir or the international space station!

I can just see it now: You go outside to enjoy a nice evening. You look up at the sky, only to see the Nike "swoosh" emblazoned in the sky. Talk about mass media. If you had enough ground sites, or satellites, or whatever the case, you could keep your ad up there indefinitely. The subconscious effect alone would be worth the millions or billions of dollars spent on this.

But how legal is all this? I have no idea. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about this little scheme. And who would decide whether it is legal or not? The United Nations? I mean, they've already decided that countries can't claim celestial bodies. The only problem I can see is in getting a nuclear reactor or whatever to power the thousands of lasers you would need.

I have no idea absolutely if this is scientifically possible. I just think that it would be worth a corporation's money and time to exploit this opportunity.