Mildly Infuriating

~~astronomers ~~ every human being

FTFY

If they block my stars I will go full terrorist.

Aliens: we come in peace

Scientists: can you help us with some of our problems? Maybe give us fusion power? Tell us about your culture?

Aliens: actually we came about the Coca-Cola.

I will not buy anything from any company that puts advertising in space. I will also make it my life's work to persuade everyone else likewise.

Anyone read Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Watch This Space" where a giant Coke logo is lit up on the moon? It was meant to be funny, not instructional. Sigh. "Torment Nexus" and all that, I suppose.

Please God no. This timeline is fucking horrible.

The day the night sky fills with billboards is the day I switch from "I really hope we as a species can get better" to "I really hope we as a species become extinct soon."

If I see your shit advertised in space I will never buy your product again.

Its already at a point where I can't take a long exposure without a dozen spacex satellites and other junk zooming through my frame. Light pollution is already at a tipping point where no stars are visible in or around large cities.

Support your local amateur astronomer club. Support the dark skies association.

This is exactly like skywriting.

Once it got popular it got really popular for advertising, then people got mad and it was an affront to God and legislators were forced to shut it down.

But also, after the novelty it stopped being effective and it just made people angry.

Now, arguably 2026’s companies care less about making people mad than any time since like the coal wars. But I still think you can’t keep posting people off forever and expect good brand outcomes. And if you can, you don’t need ads do you?

Imagine being born under an off-brand star.

It's about time.

Although honestly, with this government, all this might do is give them ideas...

They should add to it though. No construction projects or any commercial activity on the near-side of the moon.

Do all other advertising next

And just like AI, everyone will agree before the technology is mature. And then someone will make a breakthrough and find it’s possible and then the government will fold without even firing a shot and suddenly you’ll see ads all over the sky even though 99% of the population doesn’t fucking want it.

Worry not astronomers! AI space tech companies are already working hard on telescopes on moon which you can access via a monthly subscription! Hurray! /s

An older story, I know, but today was the first I heard of space-based advertising, and it made my blood boil a little.

To be clear, the infuriating part is people trying to put ads in the sky, not the astronomers fighting back, who are in fact awesome.

Excerpt from "Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers": For anyone living on Earth the result would be mindfizzlingly spectacular. One hundred and twenty-eight stars would appear to go supernova simultaneously, burning with such ferocity they would be visible even in daylight.

And the hundred and twenty-eight supernovae would spell out a message.

And this would be the message:

‘COKE ADDS LIFE!’

Isn’t it lovely that we live in a world where we need a law to ban such a thing? It honestly already doesn’t matter anymore because when you look up at the sky you almost see more Starlink trash than stars…

Suggestion: Deploy anti satellite 🛰 weapon, and extort other nations by threatening their satellites in order to pay off the national debt. Somebody get Donald Trump on the phone.

I'm only half joking. Kessler syndrome is probably going to happen sooner or later anyway. And I do think it would be possible to convince Trump the scheme is a good idea if you had access to him.

It would probably work better as a weapon against companies on the ground than as what is intended. Advertise for a company and piss people off so they boycott or harm the company instead of buying stuff from them

[off topic]

"The Man Who Sold The Moon" by Robert Heinlein. Satire of big business written long before Sputnik. Am american hustler is raising money for a Lunar rocket. One of his pitches is that if the Soviets get there first they plan on putting a big hammer and sickle across the face of the moon.

Fun read.

If we ban space advertising, then only criminals will be able to advertise in space.

What we need to fight bad advertisers in space is good advertisers in space.

This could be solved if we only allowed astronauts to conceal-carry ad-copy.

(I like to use gun arguments out of context, because it emphasizes how dumb they are.)

Coke adds life...

Obtrusive space advertising is defined in U.S. federal law as “advertising in outer space that is capable of being recognized by a human being on the surface of the Earth without the aid of a telescope or other technological device.”

Too bad they have the requirement for a technological device. Else I'd be able to argue that I shouldn't get any ads from satellite TV or when using Starlink or...