Going There… or sending our Ads

I saw in today’s news that one of Google’s founders is buying a seat into space. Nice.  I wish we could all do that, but I suppose the first bunch of civilian flights into low-Earth orbit will be reserved for those who can plunk down the money. There’s little chance I’ll get to go, even though I grew up as an Apollo-age kid thinking I’d be living on the Moon at some point in my life. It doesn’t look too likely because (for any number of reasons) no country has had the will to get us there and so the “tourist” flights that will take people up for short flights are subject to all the usual market forces. The part of me that’s a scientist understands the science reasons why we aren’t living on (or even personally exploring) the Moon. It still doesn’t make it easy to accept that the dream of going to space is reserved for the astronaut/cosmonaut corps or the well-connected.

The consolation prize, if it can be called that, is getting to send one’s name to space or blasting one’s ad for delicious and crunchy corn chips out to space, as is happening with a fan-created Doritos ad that will be beamed out to a star called 47 Ursae Majoris as part of a promotion with the University of Leicester in England. I like Doritos in moderation (as a matter of fact, I just ate one), but the thought of targeting an ad to a specific star seems a bit weird, even for me. It’s an outreach project, so it has the added advantage of bringing more attention to astronomy and physics at the same time it sells a few more corn chips to folks on. There’s no evidence yet that the folks on any possible planets orbiting the target star are clamoring for Doritos, but since they’re 42 light-years away, any wholesale orders for the chips won’t arrive at Earth for nearly a hundred years.

So, I wonder. Does Sergey Brin’s purchase of a space ride or Doritos’s ad campaign excite interest in space and astronomy?