In February 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler mission to locate terrestrial planets in our galaxy. The nearly 2300lb spacecraft will carry a DVD aboard with the names of well-wishers and their statements of up to 500 words on why they think the mission is important.
You can add your name and statement on this website before November 1, 2008 to be included on the DVD aboard the Kepler spacecraft, to be launched into a heliocentric orbit aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket.
Let’s see how many Dopers we can get immortalized in space!
Cool!
I got my certificate.
Someday, in a gazillion years, someone might find it and read it!
My message:
The law of averages suggests that at some point in time, someone, somewhere, other than inhabitants of earth, might be able to interpret what they find out in space. We like to think these “aliens” have answers to all of our problems, but most likely, they too will be searching for answers.
So, here are some answers:
Human sexual contact is very pleasurable, and impossible to describe in words. Whatever you like to do most, multiply that by 100 and you have the feeling of sex. This may explain why the earth became overrun with people and eventually died.
People here still pray to gods…they seem to think it helps. I guess whoever finds this, and discovers earth no longer exists, will be able to say, “Well, that didn’t go well for them.”
Oh, and one last thing - if you find this DVD and the earth no longer exists, you didn’t miss much. We weren’t particularly smart - we searched for intelligent life, but couldn’t even communicate with other species on our planet! How dumb was that?!
Thanks for stopping by. Next rest stop is 17 galaxies away.
Over the last few years I’ve put my niece and nephew’s names on a few spacecraft:
They’re on the way to Pluto with the New Horizons spacecraft
They’re orbiting the Moon on the Kaguya (SELENE) spacecraft
They’ve discovered water on Mars with the Phoenix lander
My above post is what happens when I’m restless yet watching Cosmos on the Discovery Channel at 2:30 in the morning while reading the Dope.
I want to write something profound yet witty and cynical, just in case hyper-advanced aliens have a thing for sarcasm, which I’m betting all advanced species must have in order to have survived so long.
