Can We Turn the Moon into A Projection TV?

[Jonfliesgoats]

I was staring out the window, watching some continent and I wondered, can we use the Moon as a television?  Imagine a very powerful, visible light laser on geosynchronous orbit over the US.  Firms could hire the space laser to project a laser light show onto the moon with their company logo, message and sales information.  With improved mapping of the lunar surface, distortion would be minimal.

Big companies would pay well to have the Golden Arches, etc. on the moon.  The US government could use this and, with billion dollar elections becoming the norm, political parties could beam whatever slogan onto the lunar surface.  

Other geosynch satellites could target other markets by aiming at the moon.

How much energy would this require?  

I suppose it would only be effective during new and crescent moons since there is no way a laser can compete with the luminance of the lunar surface under sunlight.

Animated laser light shows, too.  

http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/877/is-it-possible-to-advertise-on-the-moon

[I_Killed_Jeb]

the moon is really big, and really far dude

[KAL 9000]

Why is this in KSP Discussion? @Red Iron Crown, this would probably go in Science & Spaceflight or The Lounge, because it has nothing to do with KSP.

[Jonfliesgoats]

my mistake!

[GDJ]

14 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

I was staring out the window, watching some continent and I wondered, can we use the Moon as a television?  Imagine a very powerful, visible light laser on geosynchronous orbit over the US.  Firms could hire the space laser to project a laser light show onto the moon with their company logo, message and sales information.  With improved mapping of the lunar surface, distortion would be minimal.

Big companies would pay well to have the Golden Arches, etc. on the moon.  The US government could use this and, with billion dollar elections becoming the norm, political parties could beam whatever slogan onto the lunar surface.  

Other geosynch satellites could target other markets by aiming at the moon.

How much energy would this require?  

I suppose it would only be effective during new and crescent moons since there is no way a laser can compete with the luminance of the lunar surface under sunlight.

Animated laser light shows, too.  

http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/877/is-it-possible-to-advertise-on-the-moon

Yeah, if advertisers could access a terawatt laser display, then maybe one could see it from Earth.

Think about it: It takes the power of the SUN to light up the moon like it is, and you would have to overcome that to get a image displayed so it would be visible.

During New moon, sure it's alot easier, but you would still need a laser system that is ungodly powerful.

Edited November 3, 2016 by GDJ

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Don't forget, the moon really doesn't seem that big in the sky. You couldn't really project words or lots of colors.

[HvP]

Well, I'd personally hate to see the sky lit up like Las Vegas. The Moon is a wonder of natural beauty and posting advertising on it would be like pasting billboards to the walls of the Grand Canyon.

Aside from that, and the huge power requirements there is another big problem. The Moon really doesn't occupy very much area in the sky at all. It appears smaller than your thumbnail held out at arm's length. That's a very small apparent surface area to warrant the enormous costs and effort to try that trick for text that would be illegible.

Edited November 3, 2016 by HvP

[Jonfliesgoats]

Agreed with all of you.  Also, a single projector at a Lagrange point would be better than many in geosynchronous orbit.

With regard to the moon being teeny, it is still the moon.  When people see the McDonald's logo on the new moon, even if only teensy and faint, it will have an impact.  Honestly, who really wants a garish, vegas moon, right?  BUt incentives to exploit space are required for the benefit of mankind.  Whether we land an advertising bulldozer or project garish ads, finding some commercial reason for space development is important.

So batting around ridiculous ideas is fun and may actually get "us" onto something.

[BLUESTREAK]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: yes, but only if you can draw about 5 petawatts of electricity to power 5 billion luxor spotlights (most powerful lamp on Earth, on top of the Luxor hotel, Las Vegas). 5 petawatts is about twice Earth's total power output, by the way - so the answer is still "no!"

Source: xkcd what if, https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Edited November 3, 2016 by BLUESTREAK
Added short answer

[KerikBalm]

Replace visible light with radio "light", and change the receptors from human eyes to big antennas, and it works... sort of... at least you can send information, even if its not a direct image (you can send bits encoding images)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_Moon_Relay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth–Moon–Earth_communication

The things they did before communication sats....

[LordKael]

Hold up, with batteries and capacitors, massive solar panels, and most of a month to charge? I think we may be able to get enough energy to project once a month, on the height of the new moon. Still massively expensive, but much more practical

[Jonfliesgoats]

Hmm.  I was afraid of this.  I have an equally ridiculous suggestion to use lunar bulldozers to advertise fast food.

Space development from sandwiches: scratched off my list of things to consider

[BLUESTREAK]

Surface area the size of Africa, so it would require a megaproject unlike anything humanity has ever done to move that much regolith to the point it's visible to the naked eye. And, frankly, if you have that kind of advertising budget, there's better ways to spend it!

Reminds me of the old joke - the head of NASA bursts into the Oval Office:

"Mr President! The Soviets are painting the moon red!"

"Really? That must be costing them trillions... Tell you what, let them."

"Let them, Mr President...? I don't..."

"Sure, let them. And once they're done, I want you to go up there with a billion cans of white paint and write 'Coca Cola' over it!"

Edited November 3, 2016 by BLUESTREAK
Added lame joke

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, KAL 9000 said:

Why is this in KSP Discussion? @Red Iron Crown, this would probably go in Science & Spaceflight or The Lounge, because it has nothing to do with KSP.

You're right, though it would be better to hit the report button than tag a single moderator in thread. Moved over to the Lounge.

[KAL 9000]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

You're right, though it would be better to hit the report button than tag a single moderator in thread. Moved over to the Lounge.

Sorry, next time I'll report

[WinkAllKerb'']

(( on the late + tldr, all you need is to glow stronger than sun, so yes you can, i mean you can try at least :3 or do it fast each time there an ecclipse somewhere ))

[ZooNamedGames]

Might be possible to beam light to the moon during a new moon into a light container and refract the light into an image so it can act AS a tv on the moon.

Bit off your question but I felt it should be said.

Edited November 4, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[tomf]

As so often in life XKCD has something useful to say about your question

https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Basically it would take ever person on earth pointing a light as bright as the Luxor beam at the moon to begin to make a noticeable effect.

[kerbiloid]

Once they did it.

Spoiler

 

 

[cantab]

Yeah, if you want the light source on or near Earth, then as per the xkcd results (and the 315 kW power of the Luxor beam) you're looking at a petawatt of power, which is a thousand times global electricity production. Not remotely practical.

Better is to put the lasers on the Moon and aim them at Earth. Again based on the xkcd work, a rough guess is that will need a gigawatt or so. That guess can be checked; a gigawatt of green light all aimed at Earth would give about 5000 microlux, and that's about a thousand times brighter than a magnitude 0 star. So if you arranged the lasers on the Moon into a pattern the ones on the lunar night side at least would be easily visible. While a gigawatt is a lot of power, especially since you probably need more like 20 GW electricity to make 1 GW of laser light, it is plausible. Probably about 40 nuclear reactors would do it.

Would bulldozers and/or paint be easier? Well the smallest features on the Moon visible to the naked eye are a few hundred km across. That's a *lot* of area to smooth or paint, even if you only need to do it partially. My intuition is that the lasers would actually be less work - yes it requires arranging laser facilities and power generation, and perhaps building long transmission lines (unless you do one power plant per laser), but compared to painting an area the size of a good-sized country it's not so much. If the Moon ever gets extensively colonised, the colony resources could be naturally piggybacked on by a Moon laser advertising project too.

[MatttheCzar]