We live in a time when launching a rocket is no longer something supernatural and something expensive, now everything has become much easier with this.Of course, where there are new technologies, there are also marketers trying to use these technologies. Just as the entire Internet lives on advertising now, so future space programs can be sponsored by displaying the logos of famous brands in the night sky.
It is assumed that space advertising will be able to use ultra-small satellites, cubesats, equipped with solar-reflecting sails, in the form of individual pixels. Together they will create a giant advertisement that will be visible from Earth to the naked eye. And it will cost quite inexpensively – cheaper than modern advertising campaigns involving big celebrities. At least, this is the opinion of one group of Russian researchers who have recently studied all the specifics.
According to scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), space advertising will cost significant money, and few companies will be able to afford it. But it will still not be too expensive, and in the end it will be able to bring huge profits, and its “exclusivity” and cost will just help companies not to outshine each other in the sky, and leave more than enough free space for everyone.
“No matter how unrealistic it may seem now, here we show that space advertising based on 50 or more small satellites flying in formation is cost-effective,” write Shamil Biktimirov, Gleb Bely and Dmitry in the international scientific journal Aerospace.
The main factor that makes space advertising profitable is SpaceX’s reduced cost of launching rockets and low-cost cubesat satellites that weigh a kilogram or less, but can still be much brighter than the stars in the sky. Launching one such cubesat into orbit now costs $60,000, and if there are several dozen of them, such a satellite constellation is already becoming visible from Earth.
Currently, cubesats are mainly used by universities, schools and small groups of scientists to conduct private experiments in microgravity. But nothing prevents you from installing reflective material on them, and making them bright pixels on the “monitor” of the night sky. According to Russian researchers, fifty small satellites will be enough. That’s only about $3 million. For comparison, a 30-second Super Bowl slot costs $9 million.
According to calculations, space advertising will not cost much more. Even taking into account a number of unforeseen circumstances, the need to pay for a rocket launch, hiring a new team, paying for the development of a scheme for deploying material, testing the process, purchasing all licenses, and so on, the cost of such a very first advertisement should not exceed $65 million (and most likely an order of magnitude lower). ). This takes into account that each of the fifty satellites will have a reflector with an area of 32 square meters – the largest ever successfully deployed on cubesats. The whole procedure will take from one to three months, and then it remains only to monitor this satellite constellation.
The researchers calculated the possible optimal path for the constellation, assuming that it would fly over the cities, displaying ads over each for a little over a minute, and then move to the next location. Researchers estimated how much advertising with such coverage can usually cost, including on billboards.
Shamil Biktimirov, one of the authors of the study:
“The revenue estimate for this configuration is based on standard outdoor advertising spend, city population, and factors that limit the number of people seeing space ads: cloudiness, cold weather that keeps people indoors, and the city’s demographics.”
Based on all of these estimates, scientists have determined that cubesat space advertising could generate revenue of up to $2 million a day.
The main advantage here is that the fixed costs will be relatively low. In order for the system to work, the presence of sunlight is sufficient. At the same time, the theoretical coverage is the entire territory of the globe. What will be especially true for rich transnational companies that do not focus their PR efforts within one country.
For example, in Central Africa, even the most expensive Coca-Cola Internet advertising will not be seen by anyone, and on the distant islands of Polynesia you cannot install billboards, there are almost no roads there. And here – as soon as the product appears on the shelves, everyone will already be perfectly familiar with it. And the “recognition” and “familiarity” of the brand is, in fact, everything for the sake of which such wide-ranging campaigns are carried out.
At the same time, not everyone likes the prospects and economic feasibility of such an idea. For example, all astronomers are unequivocally in favor of the purity and immutability of our night sky. Artificial structures constantly falling into the frame can create many new problems when studying distant galaxies and stars. The time lapse of the night sky in the United States is constantly pierced by myriads of satellites.
If every major brand on the planet launches its own constellation into space, the work of scientists will become much more difficult. And, probably, the study of space by mankind is a more important task than the mass display of advertising in the sky 24/7. For example, this is the only way to detect asteroids that are on a collision trajectory with the Earth.
Connie Walker of NOIRLab, the US National Center for Terrestrial, Optical and Infrared Astronomy, told BBC News back in February:
“The number of artificial satellites continues to grow, and astronomy is now facing a tipping point. The amount of interference increases and we lose a lot of scientific data.”
By the end of the decade, more than 5,000 satellites will be above the observatory’s horizon at any given time. Many of them will be illuminated by the Sun. Such satellites are detected by even the simplest optical or infrared telescopes, depending on the time of day and season. That’s hundreds or thousands of noise in each picture.
This is now one of the main arguments that can prevent major brands from “joining” space advertising. No one wants to be branded as the main “litter” of the orbit and the enemy of astronomy. It’s almost certain that if launch prices don’t go up, eventually some company will decide to place their billboard in space. And if they make a lot of money from it, get a lot of publicity, and don’t get sued, space advertising might soon start to fill the sky above our heads, especially at dusk and dawn.
References:
https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/9/8/419
2.https://www.freethink.com/space/space-advertising
3.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat
4.https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/9-million-for-30-seconds-most-expensive-super-bowl-ads-012256123.html
5.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60262100