Wait until QAnon gets wind of this. This could lead to some severe cognitive dissonance in the ranks. There’s a long standing conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked and now along comes Melania Trump, of all people, to make a momento out of the occasion and line her pockets. Whut? Oh, yes, somebody’s head is going to roll for this. The Hill:
The NFTs — being sold for $75 each — mark July 20, 1969’s “giant leap for mankind,” when NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in the spaceflight piloted by Michael Collins.
The digital item “includes the iconic image of the American astronaut walking on the Moon, with an embedded audio file,” according to the announcement from Trump. “Collectors will unlock surprise audio upon purchase,” a sales page said.
You can salute them without selling these trinkets. pic.twitter.com/uWVY9riHoZ
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 20, 2023
You would think that NASA would be thrilled that Einstein-visa Melania would be taking notice of their achievements to swell her personal coffers, but that’s not the case. As a matter of fact, what Melania’s doing is against NASA guidelines. MSN:
In its Regulations for Merchandising Requests, the space agency states, “NASA is not approving any merchandising applications involving Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), as they are not consistent with the categories of products the Agency is approved to merchandise.” The merchandising regulations also echo another condemnation of the use of NASA images for NFTs, referring to the space agency’s Media Usage Guidelines in which NASA clearly states, “NASA does not wish for its images to be used for these purposes.”
It’s safe to say that NASA hates NFTs as much as we do, and the space agency has made it clear that it really, really doesn’t want its content to be used for the purpose of creating digital tokens. It’s unclear, however, whether NASA can do anything about it since its imagery is public domain.
The guidelines seem to stress that the space agency would rather its images not be used for that purpose but that they are not necessarily protected by copyright law, which makes them fair game. NASA did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Others have used NASA imagery for NFTs before. In April 2021, Anicorn Watches released the first NASA-branded NFT that sold for more than $41,000. As far as we know, NASA never really addressed the digital artwork. The space agency could also ignore Trump’s latest NFT collection, or might use it as an opportunity to protect its content from unwanted usage.
Melania may still be in Europe with Barron, who knows? We know Kari Lake is hanging out at Bedminster with Donald.
Whether Melania will pull this collection, litigate with NASA, or what, is unknown at this time.
