Finally a place to secure names like "Heywood Jablowme" and "Ivana Tinkle" a place in eternity.

Hee..that's hilarious. I used to have Hypercard software in the Heizer Sofware catalog..they did something similar. A friend of Ray Heizer climbed Mt. Everest and took along a little flag with all the author's names. They sent a picture of the guy on top, with an itsy-bitsy piece of paper with my name. When I need encouragement I tell myself "damn it, you've been to Everest, you can do this!"

It makes me think of "The Right Stuff", where Grissom brings up rolls of dimes that will have "been in space!" But it's cool anyway, and I'm doing it.

My two dogs are going to Mars.

Hopefully this won't happen again.

a photo of a DVD?

Reminds me of that character (an alligator?) who enjoys music by slapping an LP disc across its belly...obviously all the information is encoded there, in the grooves...

Edited by author 11-13-2002 06:47 PM
And don't forget Earth Girls Are Easy, Kisrael, where the aliens can listen to CDs just by holding them up to their ears.

But hey, I think this is a cool idea too. Me and my buddies are all going to Mars!

It'd be even more cool to put the names on a Rosetta Disk -- http://www.rosettaproject.org:8080/live/disk -- so that they'd have a better chance of actually being read by future/alien civilizations. But I'd guess NASA can barely spare the weight for the DVD.

Cool, I'm sending my little brother into space!

Gordon's totally right. If the DVD's are actually placed on the "surface of Mars" like the website says, I doubt the data on them will be recoverable after a night. Not that I don't appreciate what NASA's doing -- it's a fun, exciting idea. It's just a shame that they're not leaving the names on a more permanent artifact that someone might actually be able to recover and read someday.

Al least the aliens won't have to deal with CSS.

It doesn't actually say they're being left out on the surface; just that a picture will be taken of them on the surface. I wonder what the details actually are.

I spoke too soon -- more details here.

Summary: The DVD is part of an "assembly" which has been designed to withstand extreme environmental conditions. The DVD itself is made of silica glass, not plastic, and is expected to last 500 years or more.

A Rosetta disc would still have been a better choice, IMO. But kudos to NASA for doing this in the first place.

I missed that, Dan Z. Thanks!

you know the martians are gonna come looking for the people whose names are on that disk, first. no sir, brother, i'm remaining anonymous.