Billboard Over Miami?

An orbiting billboard that would beam a moon-sized message back to Earthly consumers is either a breakthrough in commercial funding for space or an abomination, depending on whether you listen to NASA or Carl Sagan.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has no connection to the project, which could be launched in 1996, but NASA’s Charles Redmond said the so-called space billboard is in line with the agency’s aims.

Some astronomers and consumer advocates, however, plan to protest the billboard idea.

“This proposal is an abomination,” Sagan, a well-known astronomer and Cornell University professor, said in a statement distributed by the Washington-based Center for the Study of Commercialism.

“It is the thin edge of a wedge which may destroy optical ground-based astronomy, the most ancient of the sciences. In the long run it means that there will be no place on Earth safe from advertisers,” Sagan said in the statement.

One of the astronomical community’s problems with the project is that the billboard would be projected on a shiny, balloon-like platform that might add so much ambient light to the sky that Earth-based telescopes would be impaired in their vision.

But proponents say the billboard would be visible only during daylight hours for six to 10 minutes, two or three times a day, and would not block the sun, moon or stars.