Brian Yamauchi asks: [Regarding orbital billboards...]
  
    Well, I had been collecting data for next edition of the
Commercial Space News/Space Technology Investor... To summarize:
  
SPACE ADVERTISING
    First, advertising on space vehicles is not new -- it is very
common practice to put the cooperating organization's logos on the
space launch vehicle.  For example, the latest GPS launcher had the
(very prominent) logos on its side of
   - McDonnell Douglas (the Delta launcher)
   - Rockwell International (who built the GPS satellite)
   - USAF (who paid for the satellite and launch), and
   - the GPS/Navstar program office
   This has not been considered "paid advertising" but rather
"public relations", since the restrictions have been such that only
organizations involved in the launch could put their logos on the
side, and there was no money exchanged for this.  [However, putting
a 10' high logo on the side of the launch vehicle facing the cameras
is "advertising" as much as it is "public relations", in my
opinion.]  [And by the way, I note that the DC-X test vehicle has
rather prominent McDonnell-Douglas and SDIO logos on the side...]
   There have been several studies looking at the revenue potentials
for use of space vehicles for advertising, or placing large
advertising signs in orbit.  On the shuttle, for example, I know of
several serious studies in the early and mid 1980's which looked at
putting logos on the external tank, or on the sides of the payload
bay.  These ventures would be different than "public relations", in
that the logos or displays would not be restricted to the firms
participating on that flight, and would involve payment of sums for
the right to fly the logos in a prominent organization.  (For
example, painting the ET to look like a Pepsi can, or putting a
Disneyworld logo on the inside of the payload bay where the cameras
would scan past it.)
  
ADVERTS ON LAUNCH VEHICLES
   The first paid advertising was done on a Soviet launcher in about
1990, when several non-involved foreign organizations were allowed
to pay to put their logos on a Proton launch.  (An Italian shoe
company was one of the first advertisers, I remember.)  Similarly,
Soviet cosmonauts on Mir made a paid advertisement for the last
Olympic games, and have gleefully shown banners and other items from
participating firms and organizations.  Mars candy bars, for
example, got a plug from orbit as a sponsor of the launch of the
British visiting cosmonaut to Mir.
   Now US firms are starting to put paid advertisements on launch
vehicles.  The upcoming Conestoga launch (in June) putting the COMET
recoverable payload capsule into orbit will have paid advertisements
on the side, for Arnold Schwarzenegger's upcoming movie "The Last
Action Hero".  Besides the usual logos of the participating
organizations, Columbia pictures has paid $500,000 to put ads on the
main fuselage of the mission's Conestoga rocket, its booster
rockets, and on the COMET payload, which will orbit the Earth for
one month.  A concept for this advertising display was published in
Space News magazine a couple of months ago.
   (As a side note: Robert Lorsch, an advertising executive, is
talking about suing NASA.  He charges NASA with appropriating an idea he
created with the space agency in 1981 to form corporate advertising
sponsorships on NASA spacecraft as a way to get funding for the
space program.  Lorsch contends that in selling advertising space on
the upcoming COMET, NASA violated an agreement that it "would not use
his idea without him being the exclusive representative for NASA and
receiving compensation."   This is being disputed, since the launch
is a "commercial launch" and NASA is receiving none of the
advertising revenues, but the funding for the COMET program is
coming from NASA.)
  
ORBITAL "BILLBOARDS"
   Orbital "billboards" have been the staple of science fiction for
some time.  Arthur C. Clarke wrote about one example, and Robert
Heinlein described another in "The Man Who Sold the Moon".  Several
different potential projects have been developed, although none have
been implemented, but the most real prior to 1993 being the "Eiffel
II" project, which would have placed a large inflatable sculpture in
orbit to celebrate the French Republic's Bi-centennial.
                                                (cont)