With Virgin Galactic readying its engines for take-off and global brands like Google and Unilever powering a new space race, businesses are taking customers to the final frontier by evoking a basic human emotion: 'awe'.

In a hyperconnected world, the ability to communicate with society at large has been democratised, whether you're a professional journalist or a top commenter. How can so much noise be filtered without impeding on freedom of speech?

Shooting stars are one of nature's little wonders, but spotting them is tricky – or it used to be. A Tokyo-based start-up is readying plans to ‘make the sky a screen’ and deliver shooting stars on-demand for around $8,000, which – as an experience – works out to roughly $1,000 a second.

As city streets become cluttered with advertising, brands are now experimenting in the sky instead. But as drones are often associated with shady surveillance and the sky is still considered to be a sacred place, what’s the etiquette for planting messages in the air?