Japanese beverage maker Otsuka is sending a 1 kilogram titanium can filled with powdered sports drink and children's dreams to the moon. The specially designed canister, which contains a shipment of Otsuka's Pocari Sweat powder, will mark a disturbing new frontier for humanity: the first commercial product delivered to another world for marketing purposes.

The canister will be carried to the lunar surface aboard the first planned private moon-landing mission, set to take place in October 2015. Otsuka says it hopes that the stunt will inspire young people to become astronauts, so they can travel the 380,000 kilometers (236,121 miles) to our closest celestial neighbor, crack open the can, and consume the powder inside.

The capsule will be conveyed to the moon by the Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9, designed to be a potentially reusable means of space travel by Elon Musk's SpaceX, has already made three successful supply runs to the International Space Station, but the planned mission in October 2015 would be the first time one of its rockets has successfully provided propulsion to the moon. After the Falcon 9 rocket has ignited its second-stage boosters and completed a four-and-a-half day journey to the moon, the Pocari Sweat-branded canister will be deposited on the surface by private company Astrobotic Technology's "Griffin" lander.

Otsuka hopes someone will eventually be able to drink the moon powder

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology has more important reasons to be up on the moon than to leave a beverage can on its face. The company is angling to win Google's Lunar X prize, a $20-million bounty for the first company to land a device on the moon that can both travel 500 meters on the surface and transmit high-definition pictures back to Earth. Astrobotic's deal with Otsuka will provide them with funds to achieve this goal — the company reportedly charges upwards of half a million dollars for lunar delivery — but the mission to drop a can is somewhat ironic: Astrobotic is a company that develops technologies for clearing space trash.

In addition to Pocari Sweat, the titanium capsule will contain the wishes of children from across Asia, obtained from letters sent to the company and etched onto silver disks. The company says that when the project succeeds, Pocari Sweat, with its ambiguous citrus taste, will become the first beverage to reach the surface of the moon. The American makers of another powdered beverage, orange-flavored breakfast drink Tang, may take issue with that claim. NASA chose Tang to fly with its astronauts on a number of missions, but it's unclear if the powder ever actually made its way onto the lunar surface during the Apollo missions.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/15/5719758/can-of-pocari-sweat-going-to-moon-in-2015


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Alternate title: Japan is sending litter very far away.

Can we pass some kind of international accord against this crap?

From the perspective of any given species, all that exists is there for that species. Anything we can use to our benefit, we should use to our benefit. There is no inherent value to "nature" apart from that which humanity gives it, because all value judgements are something we create.

That's pretty much true. While keeping environments clean and sustainable for our own benefit makes perfect sense, keeping it that way just for it's own sake is rather silly. We don't have some obligation to the universe not to make use of it. It's just our natural behavior.

For example, say we were able to indiscriminately dump all our radioactive waste on Mars. Seems like a great idea, but we might find a better use for Mars someday.

So it's not silly, but only in the sense that there could be some future value we haven't discovered yet.

it takes photons years to get out of the core.

Where other critters are involved, there is a natural tendency for humanity to feel some level of compassion. More importantly, in both the avoidance of harm to other critters and avoidance of harm to random environments (even lumps of rock devoid of life), there is potential future value in maintaining that environment untainted.

For example, say we were able to indiscriminately dump all our radioactive waste on Mars. Seems like a great idea, but we might find a better use for Mars someday.

So it's not silly, but only in the sense that there could be some future value we haven't discovered yet.