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Pepsi Says It'll Use an Artificial Constellation, Hung in the Night Sky Next To the Stars, To Promote an Energy Drink (futurism.com)
A Russian company called StartRocket says it's going to launch a cluster of cubesats into space that will act as an "orbital billboard," projecting enormous advertisements into the night sky like artificial constellations. And its first client, it says, will be PepsiCo -- which will use the system to promote a "campaign against stereotypes and unjustified prejudices against gamers" on behalf of an energy drink called Adrenaline Rush, reports Futurism. From the report: Yeah, the project sounds like an elaborate prank. But Russian PepsiCo spokesperson Olga Mangova confirmed to Futurism that the collaboration is real. "We believe in StartRocket potential," she wrote in an email. "Orbital billboards are the revolution on the market of communications. That's why on behalf of Adrenaline Rush -- PepsiCo Russia energy non-alcoholic drink, which is brand innovator, and supports everything new, and non-standard -- we agreed on this partnership."
If they do this, I promise never ever to buy anything from Pepsi corporation again.
Not just polluting the view for everyone in the planet, they would also add more of pointless pace junk which can break useful satellites and therefore harm navigation, communication and scientific research.
Yup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I've been to planetarium shows where they highlight light pollution. The closest one to me does a "night sky" routine where they darken the sky and make it look like night. Then, they note that we live in an urban area so light pollution limits how many stars we can see. They keep the position the same, but pretend that we've removed all light pollution. Suddenly, it's extremely dark and there's a TON of stars in the sky. Having grown up in suburban and urban places all my life and no matter how many times I see it, I'm always amazed at how many stars appear when you remove light pollution.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It was amusing (and pretty good) as a sci-fi short story. It's terrifying as "reality."
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
I'm in complete agreement with you. Luckily we have a handy list of products to avoid. wiki list of assets
You probably buy a lot more stuff from PepsiCo then you realize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This reminds me of the Red Dwarf novel 'Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers' (1989). The Coca-Cola company sends the spaceship Nova 5 on a mission to induce a simultaneous supernova in 128 supergiant stars, creating a five-week-long message in the sky visible even in daylight, reading "COKE ADDS LIFE!", and thereby crushing rival Pepsi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_in_Red_Dwarf#Nova_5
In _The Man Who Sold The Moon_ the idea was to go to the (thinly disguised) Coca Cooa company and sell them the rights to turn the moon into a billboard - a giant bottle cap - by launching small rockets to spread soot to selectively darken the surface.
But the idea was not to actually DO it. It was to NOT do it, and build an ad campaign on how it had bought the rights in order to head off one of its rivals (7 up, also thinly disguised as "6+"). The 7up/6+ logo would be easily readable from Earth, but the Coca Cola / (whatever he called it) was too "busy" to be clear.
7up was independent at the time. But it's now owned by PepsiCo.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I expected better from Slashdot. You're getting trolled, folks. The dimmest object you can see with the naked eye is magnitude +6. Those are only visible in very dark rural areas. In big city suburbs, the best you can see with the naked eye is magnitude +4. A cubesat's reflected sunlight magnitude is typically +10 or +11. Cubesats are only barely visible to a very large telescope when illuminated solely with sunlight.
Now if each cubesat is an active light emitter, that's a whole different thing. Let's say it's primarily solar powered. Let's further say Pepsi spends $BIG_NUM on 44% efficient multi-junction solar cells. If 3 of the 6 faces of the cube are solar cells, that's 300 square centimeters of solar cell. Solar irradiance outside atmosphere is 1367 watts per square meter. 300 square centimeters is 0.03 square meters. 1367 * 0.03 * 0.44 = 18.04 watts. Let's say the other 3 faces of the cube are LEDs. 18 watts of LEDs from Amazon gets you 1260 lumens. 1260 lumens from 0.03 square meters is 42,000 lux. That's like a tiny spot of direct sunlight as seen from Earth. That's pretty good, though the angle at which it's visible is limited by altitude and it having only 3 illuminated faces. There's no image whatsoever. It's just a bright spot.
These are all best case numbers, of course. In reality the three faces of the cube won't operate at maximum efficiency since they can't all face the sun directly at once, and in LEO they don't see sunlight at all for half their orbit, etc etc. Still, if they worked at it, it could be pretty obnoxious.