The unexpected and aggressive bid to buy Twitter, his favorite marketing platform, is not deterring Elon Musk from pursuing his holy grail of space travel for private human beings. Work on Starship, SpaceX’s 400-foot tall rocket which will be the vehicle to carry groups of people beyond Earth, ostensibly to colonise Moon and Mars, is under way. As of now only prototypes have been tested with multiple high-altitude flight tests and going into space seems a long way off.
But if and when it does happen, and space travel becomes as common as going for a holiday to the south of France, there will be the issue of how to pay for products and services that you want to buy en route. Surely, the spaceship will have a café on board and some duty-free shopping too.
Musk needn’t worry about that bit since a 15-year-old technology is all but ready to be deployed as a space currency. For obvious reasons cards, cash and digital apps aren’t going to work when you are some 50 million kilometres from Earth and all along the way too since most would probably get destroyed by cosmic radiation.
Which is why in 2007 scientists at Britain's National Space Centre and the University of Leicester developed the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID). Quite appropriately, it was designed for the London-based company Travelex which deals in international payments, foreign currency exchange and prepaid credit cards for use by travellers and for global remittances. The challenge for the scientists was to develop a currency that could withstand the rigorous demands of space travel. So no sharp edges or chemicals that might hurt space tourists.
According to science.com, using the polymer polytetrafluoroethylene, heavily favoured on space missions for its durability and versatility, the scientists created a currency with rounded edges and also encompassing the eight planets orbiting a sun. Each of the orbiting planets contained a serial number and taken together, these numbers would give each QUID disc a unique code to prevent counterfeiting. Yes, even in space that is a threat.
Of course, the currency was created as part of a viral marketing campaign by Travelex. As a public relations exercise it was clearly successful with most publications including the venerable BBC carrying reports on it though the Wired piece was a bit caustic. It said: “If you're wondering why people would be (a) spending money while wearing NASA space suits and (b) while floating in space rather than inside some kind of space-shop... Well, I don't think you're supposed to be wondering that.”
At the time, the new coin was pegged at an exchange rate of £6.25 to 1 QUID, not that many transactions took place. But the demand seemed real enough coming just when Bigelow Aerospace was developing an inflatable space hotel in the US, and Virgin Galactic was developing its own SpaceShip. Space travel seemed a very real possibility and Travelex really backed its new product declaring: "It's only a matter of time before people will be walking up to our shops and asking for QUIDs for their two weeks in a space hotel." Indeed, such was the optimism in 2007 that the National Space Centre predicted that regular trips to space would be commonplace within five years with tourist facilities on the moon a distinct possibility by 2050.
That deadline may have been extended a bit, but earlier this month, a SpaceX rocket carried a private crew to the International Space Station in a historic launch. The era of ordinary people, with deep pockets, flying into space is clearly here.
The QUID meanwhile awaits adoption. But at least one set of authors, Ronald Cohn & Jesse Russell, were quick to spot the possibility and a book Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination, launched in 2012, attributed to them is listed on Amazon and Flipkart. However, it is currently unavailable on both, either because it has sold out or because it never sold.
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