Send your name to Mars

[blobrana]

In 2007, The Planetary Society will send a specialized silica-glass DVD to Mars aboard Phoenix, NASA's newest Scout mission, led by Principal Investigator Peter Smith at the University of Arizona.  The disk, which is attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, will include "Visions of Mars," a collection of 19th and 20th century stories, essays, and art inspired by the Red Planet. The disk also includes special features, such as the famous 1938 radio broadcast of HG Wells' classic, "War of the Worlds."

People around the world can add their own names (or those of family and friends) to the archival disk that features the works of such visionaries as The Planetary Society's co-founder Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Percival Lowell, and many more.  The Planetary Society is collecting up to several million names to send on the Mars-bound DVD.  Visit The Planetary Society's website to fly a name to Mars.

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[blobrana]

Send your name to the asteroid belt on the Dawn spacecraft. Your name will be recorded onto a microchip that will be placed aboard the spacecraft accompanying it on its mission to the asteroid belt. After entering your name below, you will have the opportunity to print a document that verifies your journey aboard the spacecraft.

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[mr_a500]

What is the point? Who cares if their name is in a list on a DVD or microchip? The only way I can see that this would be useful is if aliens picked up the list of names, then came to Earth and killed everyone EXCEPT those on the list.

What's next? Send your pet's name to Pluto? Send your toothbrush to Titan?

[blobrana]

IMAGE

[PMC]

Actually, given that (IIRC - apologies for inaccuracy but I can't be arsed to google for exact timescales) the Pioneer & Voyager probes are expected to have a journey time of 50,000 years before they encounter another solar system, I think it's appropriate that they carry a message from the builders of the probes to the stars.  

[Karlos]

PMC wrote:
Actually, given that (IIRC - apologies for inaccuracy but I can't be arsed to google for exact timescales) the Pioneer & Voyager probes are expected to have a journey time of 50,000 years before they encounter another solar system, I think it's appropriate that they carry a message from the builders of the probes to the stars.  

In an optimistic future, manned FTL exploration would get there long before the probe got anywhere. Perhaps even recovered and put into a pre-starflight museum :-D

Also, 50,000 years in hard vacuum? I bet there'll be hardly anything left of them due to vacuum ablation by then...

[PMC]

The Voyagers carry gold phonograph records containing greetings in many languages and also a selection of music from the year 1977 when they were launched.

I can just picture a sophisticated and intelligent alien race trying to decipher "Anarchy in the UK"...  Although I very much doubt the Pistols made it into space.

Maybe the sage scholars of the planet Vulcan would rather Perry Como?

[odin]

Vacuum damages metal?  :-?

[X-ray]

They should send Bloodline's sock to Mars. Can't see that getting damaged, it is indestructible  :lol:

[X-ray]

I should add that if they don't find life on Mars, they just need to leave his sock there for a few years and that peoblem will be fixed  :-P

[Karlos]

@odin

All substances have a vapour pressure. Put any material into a hard vacuum and some of it will 'evaporate', even at the sorts of extremely low temperatures these probes will be at. Metals are a lot more prone to this than covalently bonded macromolecular materials which are held together by strong, directional bonds.

The ablation proportion is tiny, but given there's no confining volume for it to reach equilibrium in, a sample of unprotected metal will slowly evaporate into the hard vacuum of interstellar space, thinning and weakening. Indeed, very slowly. But then again 50K years is a long time.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
I should add that if they don't find life on Mars, they just need to leave his sock there for a few years and that peoblem will be fixed  :-P

I'd be quite surprised if there was no life on Mars. Given that we find chunks of Mars on Earth from ancient impacts and their subsequent ejecta, it's reasonable to assume that there would at least a few rare chunks of Earth on Mars.

We are finding life in the most inhospitable places on Earth, tough little microorganisms that can take all the heat, cold, acid, alkali, oxygen, lack of oxygen, radiation etc the environment can throw at them and yet they still adapt and thrive. I've no doubt that some deep depressions on Mars (think hellas planitia here, almost 4km below the mean surface) could harbour places where water might exist, even if it's only surface bound to silicates etc.

Also bear in mind that early human made probes sent there are unlikely in hindsight to have been fully sterilized given what we now know of some of earths biota.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
I should add that if they don't find life on Mars, they just need to leave his sock there for a few years and that peoblem will be fixed  :-P

Imagine what it could evolve into though :shudder:

[X-ray]

Well we could even things out by mating it with one of Blobzie's gym socks  ;-)

[PMC]

The resulting Blob/Bloodline seminal stocking hybrid would be far too dangerous to unleash...  Imagine the calamity if it eascaped/evolved?

 :nervous: