samadam yeah LCD’s wouldn’t handle it, but they work by filtering light, so a similar principal can be used, one that has coloured pixels that filters either directed sunlight or a projection source.
Alltaken
Or you could just fly up to the moon and paint a big logo…a few miles long…
That’s just not true. The dark side never face the sun, but it does indeed face the earth. Otherwise, we’d only have full moon.
Sorry Theeth, but that’s not the way it works. The far side of the moon always points away from the Earth. The orbit of the moon and it’s rotation are gravitationaly lockstepped together. As the moon orbits the Earth it rotates in the same direction to keep one face towards us (+/- about 10 degrees actually). The “dark side” that you’re referring to is the side that faces us; it’s just in the shadow of the earth.
You wouldn’t be able to bounce a bright enough laser off the moon on any of the sunlit portions, but that leaves about 15 days when part or all of the moon is in shadow enough to make it worthwhile.
BTW, there’s a science fiction story on a similar vein to this. It involves the first contact with an alien species. Turns out they want advertising rights for Jupiter (a galactic billboard to be exact). I don’t remember who wrote it, but it feels like it might be Bradbury.
Cool, if you ever hear what book that is I’d like to read it sometime.
if aliens wanted to buy advertising rights to jupiter. i would gladly sell them to them.
Alltaken
So litterally… the land rovers that NASA has sent everywhere are capable of some defence…they can run things over, and pinch things…so NASA owns the planets 
Right, my bad.
Martin
Right, my bad.
Martin[/quote]
Hmm, I don’t follow. I thought the same as theeth. I mean you can see the shadowed side of the moon up until full moon. That only occurs once per month. I think theeth was right but he worded it wrong. The dark side doesn’t ‘face’ the Earth but you can see it from Earth on most nights of the month - I’m sure that’s what he meant. It’s just that the word face is not ideal when describing spheres considering they only have one.
I never thought this post would move into advertising. That’s a very interesting point. As for displaying an image, why use the dark side? As people have said, you can’t power artificial light sufficiently to make it feasible. But what about refractive mirrors on the light side? Although the moon’s surface is reflective, it’s not as reflective as a mirror so it would be adequately visible. The refraction would give the necessary colour. If you had motorised mirrors, you could even make an animation.
How big would an advertisement on the moon have to be in miles for it to be discernable on Earth?
As for the size of the logo, I would say 1,000 miles for a bold image with no text.
If you had text, you’d probably have to project onto the entire moon.
agrif
Aaargh, the De ja Vu of USA. A hunderds of years ago, when all europian and asian people travelled to the use, they had once a month a contest. People got flags, no rules only one, when you planted the flag, in a cirkel of some km/s it was your land. When the rush started, people almost killed each other to own a piece of USA. Today the people that still own that piece of land has got a huge land to take care of. The most land that was owned is lost and the governament bought it.
This will also happen with the moon, massive flag planting, fights for a little piece of moon, and so on. Afther some years when people die, the governament will take that piece of moon, and then the governament owns it all with help of the people there money. So if you have brains, don’t buy anything. Even if we could, we had to buy the rockets of the USA to get there and use that piece of moon. I thought Mc Donalds was planning to do that when they sell pieces of moon, and plant a huge MC DOnalds light Sign on the moon that could be seen from earth.
This might be the beginning of the Star Wars trilogy, Mmwahahahhaah 
Agrif wrote:
Hmm, I don’t follow. I thought the same as theeth. I mean you can see the shadowed side of the moon up until full moon. That only occurs once per month. I think theeth was right but he worded it wrong. The dark side doesn’t ‘face’ the Earth but you can see it from Earth on most nights of the month - I’m sure that’s what he meant. It’s just that the word face is not ideal when describing spheres considering they only have one.
There’s a problem of semantics here. What I’m referring to is the back side of the moon; namely the side that never faces the Earth. If you look at the moon as it waxes and wanes you’ll see that the same features are always visible. You never see the back side. Portions of the “front” side (the side that always faces us) are obscured by the shadow of the Earth (ranging from none “Full Moon” to total “New Moon”).
Also:
As for the size of the logo, I would say 1,000 miles for a bold image with no text.
It would have to be as large or larger than this. The moon is actually quite a small image when seen high above the horizon. The very large moon you see when it’s near the horizon is a combination of image enlargement due to refraction in the Earth’s atmosphere and optical illusion (note: in fact a photographic study through excellent viewing conditions shows the moon appears smaller near horizon due to refraction). The smallest easily discernable features on the moon are about 1000 miles in diameter (consider that the crater portion of Tycho is about 54 miles across and is smaller than the size of a pea held at arms length).
JD-multi wrote:
I thought Mc Donalds was planning to do that when they sell pieces of moon, and plant a huge MC DOnalds light Sign on the moon that could be seen from earth.
There was an early computer game called Lunar Lander. The idea was to control the throttle of the LEM and make a soft landing on the moon. You got bonus points for landing next to the McDonalds!
Oh, I see what you mean now, I never knew that. Do you see different parts of the moon depending on where you are or does everyone on the planet see the same features?
As for the size of the logo, I would say 1,000 miles for a bold image with no text.
Wow, that’s pretty big. It might be feasible if you had enough money and resources but I don’t think it would be worth it. Especially if you go to all the trouble of setting up an advertisement and some lunar wind just blows it out of place. It could end up looking like those signs where people steal the letters to make rude words.
JD-multi made an interesting comment about people fighting for a little piece of the moon and territory marking. Do you think it will eventually come to that? How long do you think it will be before Earth runs out of room for the human race? Look at China already.
LOL 
Do you see different parts of the moon depending on where you are or does everyone on the planet see the same features?
Everyone sees the same features. There’s a good animation of the moon going through a complete cycle at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991108.html. It demonstrates the libration (wobble) as well.
As strange as it may seem, this thread is most likely a precursor of things to come. The Russians already sell advertising space on their rockets and take paying passengers, a French artitist wants to fly an orbital piece of art, and it’s only a matter of time before someone does manage to put advertising on the moon (or a McDonald’s)!
Gosh, owning the moon is nuts. It’s still not possible to even start businesses or even live there. For goodness sake, I don’t even think that the moon has an atmosphere. We’d all die if we built houses there.
Plus, commercial international space travel won’t happen for many more decades or even centuries. People have to take it one step at a time. The international space station isn’t even built yet. So why the heck would someone what to even own the moon. Haha, %| I guess people just want to own it for kicks.
Jason Lin
So why the heck would someone what to even own the moon.
I would most definitely want to own a piece of the moon (say a few hundred thousand acres). There are very serious plans for private companies to go to the moon and set up a mining operation.
One of the things which exists on the moon but doesn’t exist on Earth is an isotope of Helium called Helium-3. This is produced by the sun and carried by the solar wind. It doesn’t get through the Earth’s atmosphere (and in fact any naturally occuring Helium-3 decays in the atmosphere). The reason it’s important is that it’s the second step in the nuclear fusion proton-proton chain. It’s much easier to get Helium-3 to fuse to Helium-4 (stable Helium) than it is to get Hydrogen to fuse to Helium-3. They haven’t been able to get a stable nuclear fusion process going when using Hydrogen, but we already have sufficient technology to get a Helium-3 fusion plant up and running.
To put it in simple terms, 1 ton of Helium 3 is worth US $1,000,000,000,000 (that’s 1 trillion dollors) of oil for energy generation. That’s reason enough to go to the moon!
1 ton of Helium 3 is worth US $1,000,000,000,000
DStone are you serious!!! Hmm, either recent technology is not advanced enough to reap the benefits of Helium 3 or the US government is just nuts. If in fact there’s Helium 3 on the moon and if it’s as useful and worth as much as you say. There should already be expeditions going to the moon to mine it. It only cost a couple of million dollars to go into space.
Lol, my conclusion is it that Helium 3 thing might be a bit overexaggerated. If not, someone call NASA and tell them to go to the moon, mine it and then we’ll be able to see a space revolution. Gosh it’d be great since space exploration has been kind of sluggish for the past few decades. With all that extra money, NASA or any other person would have the money to finance anything.
OK, now I want to own the moon too, lol. Too bad I don’t believe anyone has legal claim on it. Lol, unless you can back it with force, then who would challenge you.
Jason Lin
It only cost a couple of million dollars to go into space.
Sorry, but the price of putting someone in orbit is a bit more than that.
The reason the US Gov’t (and others) aren’t rushing to the moon is quite simple. It could cost US $500,000,000 or more to develop the necessary hardware for mining Helium-3 and get it and the people necessary for operating it to the moon, along with the necessary materials for building a moonbase. It’s not like you can go down to the local ‘Rockets-R-Us’ and pick up a slightly-used Corellian freighter and cargo pods.
The reason private companies are trying to do this is they don’t have to answer to congress about where the money is being spent 
Best bet right now is for a small (relatively speaking) robot and automated processing facility. You have to mine a lot of dirt to get a little bit of Helium-3, so it’s not cost effective to ship the soil back to Earth for processing. A robot would mine the dirt, transport it to the facility where it would be processed. The Helium-3 could then be sent into Lunar orbit where a booster could be attached to launch it back to the Earth.
The above scenerio is still a bit pricey, somewhere in the US $100,000,000 range, but that’s not out of the reach of a major conglomerate. The real catch is getting it to the moon; the current set of rockets and shuttles aren’t big enough and noone’s making a Saturn V booster anymore.
That’s nothing, our Scottish parliament building cost nearly £500million. And it would be nothing to Mr Gates. Isn’t that how much his house cost to build?
Yeah, where are scientists on the anti-gravity/artificial gravity front?
That’s nothing, our Scottish parliament building cost nearly £500million. And it would be nothing to Mr Gates. Isn’t that how much his house cost to build? [/quote]
Indeed. The development cost for a good mining industry on the moon is at least more as US $15,000,000,000. But the amout of helium-3 on the moon is more as 1000 miljon Kg! Price is already mentioned. When the base and industry is setup, the transport costs aren’t that high (moon = lower gravity = lower launch costs) and the digging costs are not important. The main reason that US gov aren’t doing it yet (atleast, there were plan, but not sure), is that development costs are estimated, and can become much more. Also, they don’t recive the profit now, but after about 20 years. IMO they should just do it.