“China’s national post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space. Emails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1 spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing, the country’s space program announced on its website.
The emails will be printed, placed in space-themed envelopes, stamped with a new galactic postmark and sent on in the mail. The service, which features China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, as head of the “space post office”, is the latest initiative devised by the postal service to drum up business as more and more Chinese go online.” (via Daily Galaxy).
The Chinese have clearly mastered the principles of capitalism. This is a perfect example of the business practice of theft by imaginary added value. If I understand this correctly, nothing but an electronic representation of your message will leave the planet, passing through a processor that is in space. Then they charge you a hefty fee for getting to claim an extraterrestrial origin for your letter which will actually be printed out and mailed on Earth.
By this same logic, all entertainment and communications providers who use satellite relays could take an “it came from outer space” markup.
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