The latest artificial furor on the right concerns how an apparently excellent new film about the Apollo program shows the American flag on the Moon multiple times, but doesn’t actually include a scene of that flag being awkwardly driven into the lunar soil. Apparently the fact that everyone in the film is wearing an American flag, and the most iconic shots of the film feature an American flag, and that the main character is an American military officer is completely invalidated by the lack of stick-in-dirt action.
But there is a way that the scene could be made much more American than just showing a flag being driven into gray soil. Beer cans. That’s what this scene needs. A few well-placed, highly photogenic beer cans.
While Apollo 11 sadly missed out on this signature of American culture, NASA’s new administrator is out to see that this tragedy is not repeated. As the Washington Post reports, Jim Bridenstine has directed the space agency to look into selling naming rights to both rockets and spacecraft. He’s also instructed NASA to check into the potential for using astronauts to advertise commercial products. Rather than Apollo 11 carrying the Eagle to the Moon, it could have been the American Express Express lofting the Moon mission for that critical announcement: Tranquility base here, this Bud’s for you.
There’s deep concern from everyone at NASA other than Bridenstine that the idea of slapping corporate logos on what are public resources both violates the tradition of the agency and blurs the line between corporate and private resources at a time when that line is already becoming extraordinarily blurry. With multiple private companies creating their own boosters and their own spacecraft, it’s not even clear that there’s a tremendous amount of marketing money to be made on anything but a genuinely historic mission. After all, if Coors hasn’t felt compelled to slap its name on any of the 1,459 satellites already in orbit, what would make a NASA mission all that attractive? Is a logo on the side of the next ISS cargo launch or weather satellite actually worth anything?
Apparently, NASA is going to find out. And it won’t be the first agency to start down this path.
As the Washington Post reported at the time, the National Park Service actually opened this door in 2016 when it began considering allowing donors to put corporate logos on features at National Parks.
Parkgoers could sit on a bench named for Humana health insurance — and store their food in a bear-proof locker emblazoned with the Nike swoosh.
Naming rights for natural features were considered off the table—no Old Fanta Faithful or Gatorade Canyon. But the Park Service was open to sticking names on built things like lodges, parking lots, or ranger stations. Director Jonathan Jarvis wanted to “swing open the gates” for an “unprecedented level of corporate donations.
That seems to be the same spirit of Bridenstine’s announcement. And, since everything at NASA is a built thing, there are plenty of opportunities for logo-sticking. Still, they had better calculate carefully when they sell those rights. After all, not painting the fuel tanks on the Space Shuttle saved almost 600 pounds in weight. That was 600 more pounds of people and equipment that could be carried into orbit, instead.
At around $10,000 for every pound to orbit, that’s some pricey paint.