Trump’s new NASA administrator
wants the space agency to consider selling naming rights to its rockets and spacecraft, a move that could put large advertising on rockets lifting off at the Space Coast.
As rockets launch from the U.S. with increased regularity, they may find a new purpose as vehicles with NASCAR-level product placement.
Picture billboards — but on rockets.
According to the Washington Post, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wants the agency to consider selling naming rights to its rockets and spacecraft, a move that could turn the rockets hurtling toward the cosmos from the Space Coast into soaring billboards.
Bridenstine also wants NASA to consider allowing astronauts to appear in commercials and on cereal boxes, à la Buzz Aldrin on “Dancing with the Stars.”
“Is it possible for NASA to offset some of its costs by selling the naming rights to its spacecraft, or the naming rights to its rockets?” he said at a recent meeting of a NASA advisory council made up of outside experts, according to the Post.
“I’m telling you there is interest in that right now,” Bridenstine said. “The question is: Is it possible? The answer is: I don’t know, but we want somebody to give us advice on whether it is.”
Whether the space agency will be able to bend the ethics regulations that could limit its ability to court advertisers remains to be seen.
But Bridenstine views it as an opportunity to boost the NASA brand — already ubiquitous on T-shirts at Old Navy and Target — and enhance public awareness of a new class of astronauts. Crewed launches from the U.S. are expected to take off from the Space Coast in mid-2019, marking the first time in eight years that American astronauts will launch to space from American soil.
“I’d like to see kids growing up, instead of maybe wanting to be like a professional sports star, I’d like to see them grow up wanting to be a NASA astronaut, or a NASA scientist,” he said, according to the Post. “I’d like to see, maybe one day, NASA astronauts on the cover of a cereal box, embedded into the American culture.”
The private sector’s growing involvement in space is already vividly evident on the Space Coast. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX each have a major presence on Cape Canaveral and are on contract with NASA to send astronauts into space. SpaceX has been shuttling cargo for NASA to the International Space Station since 2012.
A privatized space station, for instance, could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars by taking part in commercial activities.
According to a 2017 study by the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a space station wholly owned and operated by private companies could fetch $455 million and $1.2 billion a year in revenues from activities that range from welcoming tourists to filming movies and commercials in space to manufacturing products for use in space and on Earth.
The demand has been there for years. According to the study, Pizza Hut spent $1 million to slap its logo on the side of a Russian Proton rocket in 2001 and, in 1997, Pepsi paid more than $1 million to have Russian cosmonauts at the Russian space station, Mir, pose with an inflatable Pepsi can replica and take it for a four-hour spacewalk.
Budweiser has already made clear its intentions to get advertising into space.
The company claimed it would be the “first beer on Mars.” As part of that process, it sent barley to the International Space Station in December to study how it reacts in microgravity.
“While socializing on Mars might be in the near-distant future,” the company said in a press release, “Budweiser is taking steps now to better understand how its ingredients react in microgravity environments so that when we get to Mars, Budweiser will be there.”