Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2019

V ladilen Sitnikov, CEO of Start- Rocket, is the one who had the “brilliant” idea of the Orbital Dis- plays, a form of advertising aimed at contaminating the starry sky. I n 2021, a sunset on the Golden Gate Bridge might look like this, with lumi- nous writings ap- pearing among the Moon, stars and planets. ASTRONAUTICS 41 MARCH-APRIL 2019 W e are continuously bombarded with advertising. It reaches us through TV, radio, phones, inter- net, print media, signposts, billboards and countless other channels. Sometimes it is tolerable and also useful, especially if it of- fers something in return and does so with discretion (as happens in the case of this magazine). Other times, it’s annoyingly pounding and intrusive (like the subscrip- tion campaigns to a leading magazine in the sector). It is not easy to completely avoid advertising messages. One solution is to turn off all communication devices and to spend a night of stargazing far from the pollution of inhabited centers. Apart from a few airplanes and artificial satellites, the relaxing vision we might