Space is not the final frontier. With imagination and initiative it shows potential to change our world. Where would the population be today without the inventions of Velcro and Ziploc.
Thanks to some innovative thinking, Aroostook County spuds and people could be orbiting this planet and moving out to Mars.
Dr. R. Aileen Yingst and Katie Stack Morgan are NASA scientists using the Curiosity rover to explore and map the surface of Mars. To aid their navigation and to acknowledge that the Curiosity has moved the two scientists have taken to naming each quadrant after places in Maine. Significant features within each quadrangle are also given notable Maine names. Towns under 100,000 population are eligible for this singular honor.
Maine for all its prominence in the science world is now facing an opportunity to gain from the exploration of a planet in this solar system. While currently these place markers are temporary as scientists write up their research these place names will be used and thus become immortalized.
Years ago, when the hit television show, “Murder She Wrote” aired on CBS its location was a cove on the Maine coast. This fiction gave the program a place. At the time of its greatest popularity it was proposed by a few that there should be a percent of Maine law. Entities that used Maine as the location for a story would then be taxed based on how much of Maine was in the program. The higher the tax, the less of the real Maine would be mentioned or shown. Thus, a show like “Murder She Wrote” would have an enormous tax bill since it only mentioned the state. Had the producers been subject to this Percent of Maine law, the more pictures and work done in the state the lower the tax burden. Call it a license fee. Legislators of the time were not that enthusiastic for the revenue stream. Today, with a population that is getting older and smaller, this now looks like a moment of prodigious possibilities.
First, Maine should register all communities and notable features as trademarks of the State, subject to fees and taxes. Second, the State should develop the Maine brand to reflect the fact that it is important to interplanetary uses. Funds raised from leasing the naming rights of foreign bodies would provide a major revenue stream. A good guess would be an eight-figure sum. More than enough to pay for state programs and possibly replacing the income and property tax methods directed to its Earth-bound constituents. The governor could take a flying leap into the pool of dollars this revenue stream could bring in.
Schools could research their alumni rolls to find out how many of their students went on to careers in space sciences. Edifying heroic students and lauding their proficiency in math and science would be a boon for school systems throughout the state.
Licensing would give control to the state of how these Mars properties are developed. Employing Maine citizens in the management and civil incorporation for there Martian places would encourage growth in the state since its citizens would have first crack at income from away. Maine would finally get its share of the space future.
This is only the start of growth. Ancillary revenues would come from developments because anything involving the Red Planet could be taxed for the benefit of Maine citizens. Even the Governor could smile since he would cure his thinning hair problem by taking on the Martians. Let’s tax Mars!
Next week, more on space and income for Aroostook industries.
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and earned a master of liberal arts degree from UNC. He began his journalism career at WAGM television later working in many different areas of the US. After 20 years of television he changed careers and taught in China and Korea.
