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[Your Name Here] Goes To Mars 112

Posted by timothy from the rather-send-name-to-a-motos-actually dept.
The-Pheon writes: "Now you can take a trip to the red planet, if in name only. NASA is giving space enthusiasts a chance to send their personal appellation on a spacecraft slated to blast off for Mars in 2003. Think of it, millions of /.ers names on the Martian surface." Of course, you can also send your name to random postcard recipients, which would get you about the same up-close view of Mars, but at least this way you can imply to your grandchildren that you were part of a Mars mission.
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[Your Name Here] Goes To Mars More

[Your Name Here] Goes To Mars

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  • From the article:
    Your name will be written into a Compact Disk that will be enclosed in one of the 2003 Mars Rover missions!
    Here's my guesstimate. Assuming an ISO9660, written with names averaging 40 bytes long (double-byte encoding), you could fit something like 17 million names on a single disk. This is only a fraction of the troll population of slashdot, so they'll need multiple CDs.

    I don't know how much a CD weighs, because someone (initials J.K.) took off with my postal scale.

  • Joilet Extenstion (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Trust NASA to have about a billion filenames on a CD of peoples names, and forget to have M$haft joilet extension on. James~1 Matthe~1 Sheryl~1 Jonoth~1
  • We come in peace, shoot to kill.

    Hopefully it won't cause too many misunderstandings.
  • I can imagine "First Post" plastered on it ...
    --
  • Now you can send costless Unsolicited Comercial Mail to Mars!

    Make Martian Money Fast!
    __
  • Think of it, millions of /.ers names on the Martian surface.

    That's just what we need..the Martian surface littered with millions of "First Post!" letters.
  • Pepsi
    Oracle
    AOL
    Nike
    McDonalds
    Disney
    Nokia
    Sony
  • Oh lovely, "Starting Global Civilazations for Dummies".. or possibly: "Start a Civilization in 21 days" > In fact, I think that whole encyclopedias and books which explain "How to restart civilisation" should be sent to Mars for safe-keeping.
    Planetes
    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
  • DeCSS or that Perl script to mars!! Erik Sorry, had to say it :)
  • By entering other numbers into the field on the certificate page, you can get the names of others who registered... Perhaps this should have been hashed somehow. One could simply write a perl script and extract the entire list of participants... then again, it ain't exactly your address and phone # that's on there. I'm sure that security wasn't a number one concern...
  • I entered and printed certificates for all the kids in my son's class. They all thought this was WAY cool. Definitely got some more interested in space exploration.

    Then it crashed.
  • Think you're green? My car gets 1 nanoparsec to the microgallon.

    1 milliparsec / gallon? I doubt it.

    1 nanoparsec per kilogallon I'd believe. That's about 20 miles per gallon.

    --
  • Hey, why didn't anyone tell me I'm going to mars?

    I -really- hate having to find out about things this way..

    Those rude bastards at NASA need a good talking to.

  • I assume, no, I hope that NASA does enough checking on names submitted to stop the AYBABTU crowd, not to mention the nascent Bart Simpson wannabees. (Last name Crotch, first name Mike.)

    If someone does, it will probably go unnoticed, burned into a CD-ROM with millions of other names.

  • what type and thickness of ink are they using?

    In case you aren't a troll: they are burning the names into a CD-ROM which will be sent along with the Mars Rover.

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by 9th ( 37374 )
    You've kind of missed the point.
  • NASA does have a need to involve the greater participation of humanity at least in the form of awareness which will lead to heightened involvement in the space program which has started showing signs of slowing compared to the 60's (for various reasons unnecessary to restate here), so what better way than to advertise and in the bargain offer something no human would refuse - a free trip down memory lane to leave your mark in this universe for long after you are gone - so what if you did not build the Taj Mahal ! you have your own piece of history in the making !!
  • So, think they'd let me say hi to everyone I've ever known along with my namesake? Now THAT would impress the ladies.. I'd make sure they all go first. My family and friends would understand, it's in the name of 'progress'. ;)
  • I hope NASA sends them some kind of preface to the list or else our alien friends may decide that it's the recipe for a yummy human pie.

    -For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.

  • Been there, done that... (Score:3)

    by morzel ( 62033 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2001 @12:28AM (#142178)
    Only the results [nasa.gov] weren't quite what I expected ;-)


    Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

  • .. (Score:1)

    by vbrtrmn ( 62760 )
    Okay who submitted the Jeff K card? And here's one for CmdrTaco, we all can't play as CmdrTaco! This isn't funny guys!

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
  • Nah, they'd have to send a copy of deCSS with a DVD. Of course, if the Martians actually used it, then we could see our first interplanetary lawsuit.

    --Dox
  • My name (well, my surname) is on Mars. It's also beyond the orbit of Pluto (and Neptune).

    My brother worked for NASA (JPL, actually), and his name is on the Voyager spacecraft and the Viking spacecraft.

    I remember when Viking landed. I was getting pictures from the mission (still have them - NASA uses GOOD photographic print paper). I even loaned my collection to a local science museum for a while. It was something special to get those pictures back then. Now, anybody with a color printer and a 'Net connection can get them. And this is NOT a bad thing.

    It's a crying shame we've allowed NASA to come to this state.
  • Liquid CO2 is possible to produce -- but not with standard pressure. Gotta do some oddball low pressure at a similar temperature as solid CO2. That said, I have no idea if Mars has such an environment or not.
  • Now the martians are gonna backtrack my address and send me even more spam....I wont mind so long as AOL sends plenty of disks to the martians in kind though...
  • Here's my guesstimate. Assuming an ISO9660, written with names averaging 40 bytes long (double-byte encoding), you could fit something like 17 million names on a single disk.

    They'll probably alphabetize and gzip the list, which should get better than 100 million names per disk. BTW, Mark Adler of NASA wrote gzip's "inflate" function, which would be needed to decode the list on Mars.
  • I wonder if encoding with BASE64 would help the situation....

    I'm too chicken to try it myself ;)

  • DeCSS (Score:4)

    by TummyX ( 84871 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2001 @12:04AM (#142186)
    I wonder how long your name is allowed to be. You could send DeCSS to mars :).
  • PS. I forgot to mention that there was once a Robert Crumb comic around about 1970 where some guy went over to the Soviet Union and set off the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal in the direction of the US. A little while later, about 10,000 US ICBMs came over the horizon and this guy thought that this was the end of civilisation on Earth. But instead, each of the US missiles ejected boxes of stuff which landed to Earth with parachutes. It turned out they contained big US luxury cars, TV sets and so forth, with a note explaining "We figured if you fired off your missiles, we wouldn't need all this stuff. So you're welcome to it because we must all be dead by now anyway."

    Well, the same principle applies to sending stuff to Mars, although it would be so much cheaper to send it all to the Moon. Whatever happened to the story about ice at the Moon's south pole? Couldn't there be life there? And why haven't we got a base there yet? That would be a great place to store data for safe-keeping - for use by whatever life-form takes over on Earth after humans are wiped out by the next big asteroid.

    city: Adelaide, South Australia

  • The info-to-Mars idea should be taken seriously.
    It's not as stupid as it sounds.

    Suppose you think you have an idea which is way ahead of its time, and requires maybe a couple of centuries to be useful. And suppose an asteroid wipes out life on Earth in 35 years from now. Then you would really want your idea to be sitting on Mars ready for future life forms to make use of. In fact, I think that whole encyclopedias and books which explain "How to restart civilisation" should be sent to Mars for safe-keeping.

    Even if we don't get hit by an asteroid, future generations will take a look at whatever is written on Mars-mission probes and may finally understand what the great idea is good for, whereas on Earth it could easily be neglected.

    city: Adelaide, South Australia

  • Albert Einstein - 19 times
    Leonardo Da Vinci - 3 times
    Mickey Mouse - 19 times
    Bill Clinton - 61 times
    George W. Bush - 5 times
    George W.Bush - once, probably the real one!
    Britney Spears - 35 times
    Bill Gates - 31 times
    John Doe - (the famous criminal) 161 times
    Adolf Hitler - not signed up yet, I hope it is filtered out by the NASA guys!

    Matyas
  • Mars got slashdotted!

    Drumroll!
  • ... since they will go to Mars and back as a weekend trip ;-)

  • Nasa funds Low? (Score:4)

    by dashmaul ( 108555 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:04PM (#142192)
    So is this NASA's way of making up for budget cuts?

    What's next? Letting rich people pay for a ride up?, Oh wait that's been done already.
  • Remember the plaque on that space-probe (Voyager? Can't remember) that had a pic of a man and woman plus a map pointing out Earth and some other stuff (a H2O molecule or something) so that the aliens would know a bit about us if they found it?

    Well, when they pick this up are they going to learn a bit about the fauna of Earth, namely penis-birds?

    Seriously, does anyone review these before the launch?

  • The name list (Score:4)

    by heikkile ( 111814 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2001 @12:12AM (#142194)
    And in 2005 the Martians come to demand compensation when the rover accidentally crashes in their capital and kills two high priests. They demand the unconditional surrender of the following individuals:

    Firs post
    First post
    Hot grits
    Kilroy was here
    goats.cx

    As all of those have been seen frequenting slashdot, they will nuke the slashdot site from the orbit if said persons are not delivered to Mars within a week.
  • I worked at a custom circuit board factory for $2.75 an hour when I was fresh out of high school. We did 5 6-layer boards the the Viking Mars Lander spacecraft, and since I worked in the lamination dept., I scratched my real name inside one of the layers.

    It didn't change my life.


    blessings,

  • ...Jon Katz? Oh... it's just a name... darn.
  • You could've replaced [Your Name Here] in the story with the name of the actual person reading the page. Would made for some fun to see a news story called 'JonnyDigital goes to Mars' :)

    Imagine if the search engine bots picked it up... 'Google Web Bot goes to Mars' :)

  • Of course, by the time one has grandchildren it might be the case that getting your name on Mars isn't really new and cool anymore. Especially if you wheelchair is made in Mars.
  • Seriously, it's going to be there a long time...

    Are you sure? Maybe the CD-eating fungus [slashdot.org] comes from Mars and is awaiting its lunch :)

  • Think of it, millions of /.ers names on the Martian surface.

    Sounds like a a good start to me. What do we do with the ones that remain?

  • I wonder if the first name on the space ship is "First Name" or something dumb.

    Akchilly, if you view certificate #1, the name is: George P. Varros Jr.

  • And they'll be calling collect, at that.

  • Actually, this would be a good thing to do if the Foundation books turned out to be true. As you may recall, no one could remember where the Human race had originated. Scientific thought had broken down to the point where no original research had been down in over a century: scientists read the research of earlier scientists.

    But, if you stick to it through Foundation and Earth (the eighth book, IIRC), the Earth is discovered and R Daneel whosits is on the moon, the Earth itself being uninhabitable due to high radioactivity.

    Thus, something like this would help future generations trying to discover their roots.

    The Encyclopedia Galactica was of course a sham, meant to hide from the empire what was really going on. Hari Seldon wasn't thinking about recording all the knowledge of the world because psychohistory had told him that it wouldn't matter.

  • I want to be the first to litter on an otherwise un-inhabitted planet...

    steve
  • ...and all I got was this lousy .sig file!
  • Appearently the CD is on Mars nevertheless:

    Mission controllers for NASA's Mars Polar Lander mission are awaiting the next opportunity to communicate with the spacecraft, whose transmissions have not yet been received since it landed on Mars shortly after noon Pacific time today. (see here [nasa.gov])

    It may even have been spotted again:

    The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has been quietly scanning Mars pictures, looking for the Mars Polar Lander since early December 1999. According to a source close to the NIMA effort, photographic specialists at NIMA think they ve spotted something. But NASA officials say it stoo early to tell. (see here [space.com]

    So at least this CD reached its mission goal and is by now assimilated by the Marsians :-).

  • Only the name :( (Score:3)

    by gerddie ( 173963 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2001 @12:33AM (#142207)
    Dear NASA,

    I am very unhappy that you only send names,
    because i very much would like to send a full
    contact announcement to the marsian females.

    Please could you think about it a second time?

    Yours sincerely
  • "Paul's name slammed into the martian dust 'ere, 2004, at 1 mile per second instead of 1 metre per second"?

    Sorry.

  • Darth Vader has his name on it 19 times and Luke Skywalker has his 20. I guess the light side of the force is currently winning.
    ---
  • Just found out that I already subscribed in August 1999, now I'm listed twice, :-(
  • Ok, here's the deal:

    From now on, stop trying to be clever and/or witty on the front page. Just summarize the article like you're supposed to.

    In return, I will stop trying to post clever and/or witty things as well. Which is just as well, because it doesn't appear to be working for either of us anyway.

    eudas
  • Interestingly, all the certificates that are linked too from the comments in this page return "certificate not found", when the link is opened. They must be doing something. I remember submitting my name either one or two years ago, at any rate, it's not really news. I couldn't find my name though, maybe I wrote my name down to be sent with another mission. But what message would it send when the mission supposed to carry "our names" (cylindrical track of pits on a 12 cm disc) crashes/disappears. Interestingly, certificate no. 1 belongs to the son of the Curator.. that's nepotism! No. 2 to also have "Varros"!! Well I guess if you're the "admin", your family would be the first to hear about something as cool as getting your name encoded into pits on a cylindrical discs to be sent to Mars. It's a shame though, they're getting Slashdotted..
  • well it's been "mounted" (go to link on previous article) on the failed Lander.. /mnt/hdc0 ?
  • I've known people to work for eastman kodak that knew of the optics being built in the 1960's for spy sattelites and I am wondering when will such optics be made for things like the mars global surveyor 2 or 3. If they can obtain a higher resolution with "spy vs spy" technology with a sattelite that will be orbiting another mars or another planet who cares ?
  • ...and they tell you that your luggage got sent to Venus.
  • Cert #1769911 [nasa.gov] - Fritz Post.

    Perhaps I'll stick to my day job.
  • Now that he has his name back, he can send it. --Mod this down.
  • Hmm. Another Ham Radio Operator doing EME (earth moon earth) signal bounce.
  • Even if you allow that the project will cost NASA some money, it's well spent. More interest and participation means that people might vote more space-friendly congressmen into office, which might increase the budget. Aside from just being a good thing to do, it may also be financially shrewd.
  • Just when you thought there was enough graffiti here on Earth... I assume, no, I hope that NASA does enough checking on names submitted to stop the AYBABTU crowd, not to mention the nascent Bart Simpson wannabees. (Last name Crotch, first name Mike.)

    Kierthos

  • Re:Nasa funds Low? (Score:4)

    by Kierthos ( 225954 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:19PM (#142221) Homepage
    No, no... they want a Mars mission that won't crash!

    Kierthos

  • ....that the server is on Mars as well?

    Note: It is a violation of U.S. Code to improperly use Federal computing resources. You are on an official US Government (Federal) web site now.

    Does this /. make us all criminals?

    What is the cost of adding one CD to the payload of the lander? what amount of fuel is needed to launch that extra weight?

  • ...they can have a place to live. [moonestates.com] About 20 pounds gets you an acre.
  • Read the article a little too quickly and got excited about posting the moonestates thing. Never mind.

  • Beem there, done that (Score:3)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2001 @02:25AM (#142225)
    I wonder how long your name is allowed to be. You could send DeCSS to mars :).
    I have tried to do it with the short perl code, and got the following result :
    Your name has been entered into the Mars Name Disk list and is pending approval.

    Only proper names will be accepted.

    If you have entered a URL or an e-mail address, it will be removed from the system.

    Note: It is a violation of U.S. Code to improperly use Federal computing resources. You are on an official US Government (Federal) web site now.


  • They did the same thing with the Polar lander in 97' or 98'.
    I signed up half my family cause I was bored.
    But I ran a search on my name, and I was the only one on there, and I had just readded my name, so I guess they didn't transfer over the names from the old one.
  • What!!!!!?

    Somebody set us up
    the bomb!!!
  • Who got certificate No. 31337 ??

    http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/getcert3.cfm?uid =31337 [nasa.gov]

    Lucky bastard

  • I donated a computer to the local university's satellite project and I think the launch was some time earlier this year. If so, there's a bird with my name on it out there. Or one that says Hugh Jass. I don't remember which was the final submission.
  • Suppose you think you have an idea which is way ahead of its time, and requires maybe a couple of centuries to be useful. And suppose an asteroid wipes out life on Earth in 35 years from now.

    Well, another solution would be to make sure no asteroids hit the earth :)

    There's people working on the problem of tracing "dangerous" objects and calculating the probability of impact.... Have a look at this site [unipi.it] to know more (note: it's very technical, but there are links).

  • I can imagine "Sponsored by Microsoft" plastered up the side of the boosters now. Imagine how many names Gates could buy :)
  • Hey, you'll just ruin it for everyone else! When the MPAA learns of this, they will send their own shuttle to the moon to destroy the compact disk. About two million people are going to be pissed that their name is no longer on the moon.
  • "If you see this, you get off too soon."
    &nbsp_
    /. / &nbsp&nbsp |\/| |\/| |\/| / Run, Bill!
  • Unfortunately, we are very sorry to report that the CD-ROM bearing all the names was mounted on the failed Mars Polar Lander. Thats too funny...
  • I can hear commentator speaking...
    Millions of people, have turned their eyes at mars rider when it takes its first steps on mars. Every eye looks the E-streaming that comes, from earth largest telescopes. Mars rider, puts one of its hooks to land, and beguns moving. It turns slowly left, and making half circle by its movement, then it turns again, but right this time. What has the mars bot gone mad?
    Oh now it goes straight a head... wait it turns again right... Now it turns 90 left on its place... Oh it goes backwards now... THE GUYS AT NASA MUST OF MIXED UP SOMETHING... Its terrible waste... Oh now it goes forward... A quite long way... Hey we got a call from the audience of this program... Is that S that it made.... Oh yess... Thats S and P, now it got O wait... Are they trying to write SPOCK there? No the next letter is N, what goverment agency is that? SPON??? What next letter is S. SPONS who is that? Now they got N... [Some one yells from live audiens..] THAT MUST BE SPONSORED.
    Oh yeh... who has money to sponsor that thing, atleast, the hook gets some really bad damage after this it must cost a LOT, to get that hook there, for creating these letters. Now it begings writing their name, It starts with B... What company starts with B? Or is that individual like THE Bill Gates. Oh what company starts with BY.. oh its not a company... Oh my mistake, the company starts with M, oh then comes I .... Now C... [Oh that must be Microcash, they have made some serious adverticement in last year, but they didn't have all those capital investors when this was launched... MICRO.. Well it must be microcash...
    NO next letter is S, MICROS... Hey it stopped. What happened. What company is Micros... hmm, what's that blue glow in side of that, rider...
    What NASA tells us that they have some slight technical problems, with that... lets connect them... "We have some slight technical problems, in the mars rider. We have already tried to give it soft reboot to get initialized again, but it has failed, we still have hardware reboot as solution... WHAT DID YOU SAY... DID THEY PUT IT IN A BUTTON IN FRONT OF IT. OH, WE'LL SUE THEM. WHAT... WE CAN'T THE EULA SAYS SO. F(bleep)K MICROS"
    Oh back to studio, well we will finish our transmission on mars project now. Good night. God bless america.
  • I just want to be the first to say HAIL - to our new Ant Leaders...
  • Good Afetrnoon Gentlemen... all your evidence of prior water holes are belong to John Doe,Mary Bloggs, John Citizen, Bruce Willis, Justin Reid , Bill Gates, Cowboy Neal , ESR...etc etc etc. Some one set us up the CD Rom. Ok..over it? Me too... but this is in fact the first post that I have ever seen that actually warrants it.
  • If you scuba-dived one day does that make you a fish ? There are hostile environments aplenty on Earth as it stands. You think human's organisation and technology is in any kind of good-enough shape to consider that Terraforming very-first-step ? As far as I can see humans are more in the process of Mars/Venus-forming the Earth atmosphere. There are many more technologies to be mastered than rockets and space suits before you can say humanity really entered space in any kind of meaningful way. Disposable, yeah right. Have you considered where these thought of yours come from ? Are they really yours ? Think 60's, arms race, long-range bomb delivery ...
  • Terraforming? Who said that? I'm picturing a sealed enclosure on the moon, since it lacks the gravity to keep an atmosphere. The technology exists (or almost does) to keep a self-sustaining colony on the lunar surface. NASA had originally planned to have one on Mars by 2010. (See missing craft / budget cuts == changed plans)

    And no, I have never gone scuba diving. It looks cool, though. But don't forget, there are places in the ocean that humans cannot reach, yet. It's easier to live in space than reach the bottom of the ocean. And I don't know what you're talking about with "Disposable." That's just out of the blue.

    And remember what they say: "Nothing is impossible until it's possible."
  • Well, at least NASA is continuing its Mars exploration program, even if it is a miracle they can get the funding. Perhaps this will help gain popular support, but most likely not - If they're too small minded to care about space, they won't care if their names are out there. At this rate, who knows when the next human will leave the grip of Earth. It's amazing they've gotten as far as they have on the Space Station. No human has set foot on any extraterrestrial surface since December 1972. We obviously don't lack the technology, just the ambition. A Moon Base, while still sounding like Sci-Fi, would be well within our grasp if we had continued moon missions. From there, it is an easy jump to Mars. (Not distance wise, but the moon is a lot easier to take off from.) Out future lies in space. It is inevitable, as so many things are. I'd rather have my tax money spent on space programs than most other things. Although I will not live to see it, I would like the day to come when we can left the earth behind (as we may have to do some day), and head into the unknown, with only the stars to guide us.
  • Well, it seems that Humanity cannot keep its basic drives under control. Look at what we are doing to the planet Earth. Garbage is one of our primary problems here, and now we are sending more to Mars in the form of names. Yes, it would be very nice to have my name on another planet, but what does it really accomplish? It's just junk we can now pile up on other worlds. We are indeed a doomed race... Sorry if this post was a bit bleak and troll-like. I don't mean to be a troll, please forgive me.

  • If the Martians read the list and invade (Score:3)

    by koreth ( 409849 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:06PM (#142242)
    I'm personally going to dodge their heat rays long enough to throttle whoever put their name down as "All Your Base Are Belong To Us."
  • Let's terraform [howstuffworks.com] the planet Mars [howstuffworks.com]!
  • So now I get to publish my name so a bunch of fossilized martian microbes (if any even exist) can spam me in 2 million years...

    Sheesh!!!

    Does anyone with an actual brain think this is cool?
    --
  • John Smith

    I come in peace!!!

    No, not that John Smith... A different one... The one that lives in New York City... You know, the Big Apple? Big city, in the United States of America... Um... On Earth... City... A place where lots of people get together and live and do business... Yeah, people... Um, the beings that dominate Earth... Um, yeah, the planet next to you... The little round shiny thing in the sky... Green and blue... Closer to the Sun than you are... Yeah, the Sun... Um, the big round bright thing? Yellow... The thing that supplies all your energy with lots of radiation... In the center of the solar system...

    I always wanted to go to Mars, but I can't... Um, yeah, Mars... Your planet... Red planet... Like Earth, only smaller and further from the Sun...

    Don't you even speak English???
    --
  • Actually, I don't think they are reviewing them. I searched for Sam Hughes, and got two matches in a row: 1707992 and 1707993. There has to be some funny names in there.
  • Actually, they're reviewing every name submitted, but I guess there really could be someone out there named that. Since NASA receives public funds, it would be a good idea to not discriminate. :)
  • Hmmmm. Bit of a catch-22, though. "Geez, if only we could get to Mars we could have all the information that we need to learn how to get to Mars."
  • Any ALF able to reach Mars just has to have Acrobat Reader. Without it Mars could not have been reached (And Linux, of course) ;-)
  • brilliant; however I don't think the martians will be happy about your shipping costs or your phone charges
  • Dear Martians,

    I would like to get for X-mas an Interstellar Overdrive, a Metamorphosing MegaMan and the Gigartuan Gruntblasting GrunchGun.

    thank you, mister Martian,

    YeeHaW_Jelte

    ---
    Living is a way of life ...
  • With NASA's latest track record those names will indeed arrive on Mars...splattered all over the surface.

  • hmm (Score:1)

    by isudoru ( 452928 )
    i sent my name to moon a couple of years ago ;)

  • I think that whole encyclopedias and books which explain "How to restart civilisation" should be sent to Mars for safe-keeping.

    Yea, let's write the Civilization-From-Scratch-HOWTO. I'd start like this:

    0. Introduction

    This is HOWTO will teach you how to start a civilization from scratch. I will call this a CFS from now on.
    During this HOWTO I'll assume that you're a Carbon-based lifeform, but this HOWTO is known to work with Silicon-based beings also.

    1. Choosing & Preparing the Planet

    Of course, the planet must have enough of all the basic recources you need. For carbon-lifeform (using the ATPase-system to gain Energy) that's oxygen.

    Note: you need EVERY element from the periodic table, especially uranium and plutonium. That'll reserve you the option to start over from scratch if you have to. Read the GNuclearBomb-Mini-HOWTO for details

    ...



  • If it IS meant for ET, consider the following hurdles to its decoding..
    • How to read a disc with microscopic pits? Perhaps they have never done spinning optical media. Maybe they'll try to read it like a record with a nanomachined stylus?
    • The 8-bit byte
    • Skipping or understanding the TOC and other headers
    • The ASCII character set
    • The alphabet
    And after they've spent years on it, what have they got? A list of Slashdot readers! Perhaps NASA will preface the list with "The following people hate your extraterrestrial guts and should be evaporated first upon invasion:"

  • I'm personally going to dodge their heat rays long enough to throttle whoever put their name down as "All Your Base Are Belong To Us."

    I doubt you'll be able to, seeing as you have no chance to survive, make your time.

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