Dan Harlow

The world’s largest foreign exchange company Travelex believes it has the “solution” to interstellar commerce. Called the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID, for short) these lozenge shaped denominations represent the future of what money could look like once spaceflight becomes commonplace for the regular citizen.

Manufactured from a space qualified polymer called PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene - basically Teflon), the QUIDs have been designed to withstand the rigors of spaceflight. Travelex wanted to create a currency that possessed no chemical risk to astronauts and space tourists while in biologically fragile environments such as space ships and space stations. The QUIDs also needed to be rounded and have no sharp edges which could pose a danger to electronics and pressurized space suits.

Each QUID “contains eight planets orbiting a sun, reflecting the position of the planets in Earth’s Solar System. In addition to the aesthetic appeal this will help if the QUID needs to be used on planets inhabited by other life forms. Each of the orbiting planets will carry a number, like the serial numbers on notes, giving the disc a unique code thus allowing currency to be tracked and helping to prevent counterfeits.”

So why not just use a credit card? Well anything that has a magnetic strip would be too badly damaged by solar radiation and since that data needs to be transmitted to a bank back on Earth, the distances would be so great that it would be impractical for the customer or vendor to wait for an approval or denial.

In the Travelex press release of the QUID a representative is quoted as saying “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. There will be a real need for this currency to be introduced to meet the needs of those intergalactic tourists. Wherever we go on holiday – whether its Spain or Saturn we’ll always want to take some cash. Apart from anything else, if you’d just had a fortnight in space you’d definitely want to buy a souvenir to bring back.”

One QUID currently costs just under $13.00 US at the current exchange rate and Travelex is hoping to begin selling them online, at currency shops in the UK and has even put in a request to become the first currency exchanger on the moon.

Now while all of this may seem like great news for the future of spaceflight there is one nagging little problem with the QUIDs. They are huge! Where is an astronaut or space tourist going to put all these buggers? Are we going to have to stuff our spacesuits to the point of looking like the Michelin man or will we carry around leather money pouches like in some fantasy role playing game?

While I appreciate the efforts of Travelex to pursue a standardized Terran currency, I’m pretty sure we can come up with something a little better than giant Teflon lozenges. We don’t want our first contact with an intelligent alien species to consist of asking them if they can make change for 20 QUID while at the toll booth on the intergalactic highway.

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