Why don't rockets have adverts on them?

In the year 2000, a Russian rocket launched from Kazakhstan carrying one of the first pieces of the International Space Station into orbit. Although this may look like a normal rocket launch, on the side of the rocket was a giant Pizza Hut logo. This was part of an ad campaign where Pizza Hut paid 1 million dollars for Russian cosmonauts to eat their Pizza in space and to have their logo displayed on the side of the rocket. But why don’t we see ads on the side of rockets more often? In this video, we’re going to look at the unusual history of advertisement in space-flight. We’re also going to look at why it’s not common and how the future of low cost rockets might change that. In the modern world of internet and television, advertisements are everywhere: sporting events, tourist attractions, movies, transportation. Anything that attracts a lot of attention will also attract advertisement. The 2019 Super Bowl was watched by 100 million making the price for a 30 second commercial around 5 million dollars. But spaceflight is no stranger to large audiences. The first Moon landing in 1969 was watched by a record breaking 600 million people and the first Falcon Heavy test flight was viewed by millions of people online. Despite the worldwide attention, advertisements never found their way to these important spaceflight events. Due to NASA being a government agency, it has a restrictive policy which stops astronauts and other employees from endorsing products. Since the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, NASA has been sending M&M’s up to the Space Station for astronauts to eat. However, instead of referring to them as M&M’s, astronauts have to call them ‘candy-coated chocolates’. The Science and Technology Institute estimated that NASA could make around 100 million dollars in revenue if they agreed to do a sponsorship and advertisement deal. However, this is an insignificant amount when it comes to doing business in space. The Russian’s on the other hand are far more open to the idea of advertisements. A Russian Cosmonaut famously hit a golf ball into orbit as part of a paid sponsorship for a Canadian golf company. In 1996, Russian cosmonauts took a giant Pepsi can into space to float outside the Mir Space Station as part of Pepsi’s campaign to make the first commercial in space. This is nothing compared to what Pizza Hut were planning. In 2000, they were looking at the idea of projecting their logo onto the surface of the Moon using high powered lasers. After discussing the idea with physicists, they realised that the enormous amount of power and accuracy required to pull this off would be almost impossible and it would require hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Instead, Pizza Hut settled with the idea of displaying their new logo on the side of a Russian Proton rocket. Apart from this ambitious advertising campaign, rocket companies have yet to open their doors to the world of sponsorships. But with the new wave of private companies getting into the spaceflight industry, this could change. Companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab have drastically cut the cost of launching rockets. And with the online viewership of these launches growing in popularity, we could start to see sponsored liveries appearing on rockets, whether we like it or not. So although the world of advertising has yet to make it’s way into spaceflight, we can only hope that the first step onto Mars isn’t sponsored by Pepsi.

Channel: Primal Space

Views: 1,652,523

Keywords: adverts on rockets, international space station, commercials in space, food on the international space station, astronauts, apollo 11, Moon landing 1969, advertise on side of rocket, falcon 9, spacex, elon musk, nasa, space shuttle, Russian proton rocket, projecting a logo onto the moon, spaceflight endorsements and sponsorships, rocket lab, Rocket launch

Id: idu0MWpJq58

Length: 4min 46sec (286 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sankyu99]

I can see some global company doing this within my lifetime.

Luckily, I can’t read Chinese.

[u/DirtyDanTheManlyMan]

With all the advertisements for pizza in Russia, I wonder what most Russians think about pizza.

[u/Landlubber77]

Thirty light years or it's free.

^{yes I know that's a unit of distance, not time}

[u/[deleted]]

vanish hurry lunchroom thumb observation treatment desert six cause lush -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[u/abowla]

Take a moment to look at trump eating a piece of pizza backwards and understand that is the president

[u/barath_s]

A Russian startup proposed putting giant billboards in space

Astronomers concerned with light pollution and space debris hope the idea never gets off the ground

[u/avitaburst]

Was that a brief clip of Trump eating a pizza slice backwards?

[u/barath_s]

The US had passed legislation in 1993 that prevents obtrusive advertising in space, with exceptions like logos on rockets or on astronaut patch.

Even if it had turned out practical, I wonder how Pizza Hut would have bypassed that ? Maybe the russian arm of pizza hut could have tried that ?

After pizza hut put their logo on a russian rocket , they delivered pizza to the ISS [Your delivery jokes go here]. Kodak had their logo on material on the outside of ISS. But the first ad filmed in space was by an Israeli milk company on Mir, in 1997

Nasa recently set up a commission looking into ads and sponsorship, so there could easily be many more changes in the future (subject to the US law, enforced by teh FAA)

[u/uwotm8_8]

Is it really that hard to come up with a better tasting pizza?