# Invitation to Mars ... eventually



## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

*NASA invites you to send your name to Mars on its next mission*

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nasa-invites-send-name-mars-084738031.html



> NASA is giving the public the opportunity to send their names to Mars on its latest mission to the ‘Red Planet’.
> 
> The Insight Lander is scheduled to blast off to Mars in 2016, and will carry with it a silicon microchip containing all the submitted names.
> 
> ...


 ... wow, to go where one's name has never gone before, with free points and no baggage fees .. :angel:


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> *NASA invites you to send your name to Mars on its next mission*
> 
> ... wow, to go where one's name has never gone before, with free points and no baggage fees .. :angel:


What good is having your name on a micro chip to be sent to Mars? No body there can read it even if they had the equipment to decode the chip.
Just as impracticable as..... this technicolour dream...a space elevator 20kms high so that countries can launch rockets off it and save a ton of fuel.

A Canadian one at that....
Sounds good in theory...but probably more than one small hitch in building it and getting it to stay stable in high winds.
Gives a new meaning to "Beam me up...Scotty."


> the next step is to build a demonstration tower approximately 1.5 kilometres tall to test the concept. He said the company wants to license the technology “to a wide range of interested companies” in order to make the space elevator a reality as soon as possible.





> The material needed to produce a suitable, 100,000-kilometre-long tether cable will likely only become available in the 2020s


http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...ets-patent-for-20-km-high-space-elevator.html


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

carverman said:


> What good is having your name on a micro chip to be sent to Mars? *No body* there can read it even if they had the equipment to decode the chip.]


 ... true, not now but maybe in the year 3015 when Mars get colonized. Or imagine earth gets annihilated - at least your name still exists somewhere in this galaxy.  And this offer is coming "NASA" which is legit and I'm sure NASA can figure out of something on what to do with the first virtual citizens of Mars....




> Just as impracticable as..... this technicolour dream...a space elevator 20kms high so that countries can launch rockets of if it and save a ton of fuel.
> 
> A Canadian one at that....
> Sounds good in theory...but probably more than one small hitch in building it and getting it to stay stable in high winds.
> ...


 .. hmmm, didn't read on this one yet ... countries launch rockets off it and to save on fuel? First, how many countries launch rockets these days anyways and how many can be built practicably?


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> ... true, not now but maybe in the year 3015 when Mars get colonized. Or imagine earth gets annihilated - at least your name still exists somewhere in this galaxy.  And this offer is coming "NASA" which is legit and I'm sure NASA can figure out of something on what to do with the *first virtual citizens of Mars.*...


Even if the earth gets annihilated, your dna will still exist..somewhere. 

At least to me, your name on a headstone here will still prove that you existed here at some point in earth's epoch.
Over two thousand years ago, there was a crucifixion of Jesus. They think they have found the tomb, but there is nothing in it to prove that he existed..only the shroud of Turin and
what is written about him. 

Now if microchips were available back then, would it make any difference? Probably not.

1000 years from now, if Mars has any colony at that point, assuming the earth still exists with some lifeforms on it, it probably won't make any difference to future 
space archaeologists, who may have the technology to scan the microchip and find a lot of name on it from 1000 years ago but these names will be meaningless to them. 

It may be a nice touch for NASA to offer to add you name to a x gigabyte flash drive microchip, but in the end...what will it mean to anybody else?


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

carverman said:


> Even if the earth gets annihilated, your dna will still exist..somewhere.


 ... yes, along with the DNA of millions of people and animals and anything organic. So is that DNA a donkey or Beaver101? 



> At least to me, your name on a headstone here will still prove that you existed here at some point in earth's epoch.


 ... not when Earth totally destroyed or maybe sucked into a Black Hole.



> Over two thousand years ago, there was a crucifixion of Jesus. They think they have found the tomb, but there is nothing in it to prove that he existed..only the shroud of Turin and
> what is *written* about him.


... at least there is the hypothesis he existed, on written "history".



> Now if microchips were available back then, would it make any difference? Probably not.


 ... would it make any difference if microchips exist now for the future. Maybe the future will be rule by machines only given advancing technology. Maybe a pandemic of some sort wipes the human-race out.



> 1000 years from now, if Mars has any colony at that point, assuming the earth still exists with some lifeforms on it, it probably won't make any difference to future
> space archaeologists, who may have the technology to scan the microchip and find a lot of name on it from 1000 years ago but these names will be meaningless to them.


 ... then why do we have time-capsules? 



> It may be a nice touch for NASA to offer to add you name to a x gigabyte flash drive microchip, but in the end...*what will it mean to anybody else*?


.. that Beaver101 from CMF of Earth existed? Or use your imagination. It would be nice to add abit more info on to the chip to the name, like a date or coordinates, eg. TO, 2015 or Beaver101 says "Hi!". :biggrin:


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

My name is probably already millions of miles further away than Mars. I'm sure it's been broadcast on the radio, which means it's been broadcast into space travelling outwards at the speed of light...of course, one of the people leading the charge across the universe, in pictures, is none other than Hitler having been in some of the first over the air TV broadcasts.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

carverman said:


> ... then why do we have time-capsules?


A time capsule is different. Humans put supposedly important documents/pictures and perhaps literary novels in these, bury them and the location of the time capsule is documented.
A hundred years from today (say 2115, if we haven't polluted ourselves out of existence), somebody may actually want to dig up these relics from the past FWIW. 



> .. that Beaver101 from CMF of Earth existed? Or use your imagination. It would be nice to add abit more info on to the chip to the name, like a date or coordinates, eg. TO, 2015 or Beaver101 says "Hi!". :biggrin:


It only matters if there is someone there to be able to read it. Like earth's recorded history, which historians can use to study our evolution, what important events, dates and people that were part of creating those events. 

Imagine if microchips of sufficient capacity existed 2000 years ago, and many many many had their names added to this list? Who cares, unless
you are from the elite..the important contributors to society, like scientists, researchers who find cures for cancer..etc.

For the ordinary people, except a couple generations of family that knew them maybe, but once that time passes, nobody really cares. 

Now there is a program on TV, I watch sometimes called "Ancestors in the Attic", where somebody wants to know more about their family tree..who begat who, when and where, how they ended up, and how am I related....that makes sense to be able to trace your gene-olgy...but to have your name included on some space flight..
it may be important to you, but nobody else, I would think........unless you were part of the first people to walk on the moon or another planet.[/QUOTE]


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Just a Guy said:


> My name is probably already millions of miles further away than Mars. I'm sure it's been broadcast on the radio, which means it's been broadcast into space travelling outwards at the speed of light...of course, one of the people leading the charge across the universe, in pictures, *is none other than Hitler having been in some of the first over the air TV broadcasts*.


What?..is he still alive? I heard that they had a secret base in Antarctica.....the new generation that is. The first tv broadcast in Germany was done during the
Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. I'm sure that 'der Fuhrer" would take advantage of that.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

He's alive and well, just head out about 75 light years and catch a speech or two from him.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Just a Guy said:


> He's alive and well, just head out about 75 light years and catch a speech or two from him.


I hope that no other civilization out there can interpret his speech. It's interesting though that that radio or analogue TV transmission can still be travelling in outer space 
after all these years. Maybe Churchill's famous speeches too.

On both Voyageur I & II interplanetary space craft, there is a 16-2/3 rpm record under a gold cover, that has digitized pictures and famous speeches on it, in the hope that someday, 
some alien race can figure out from the instructions on how to play it back, 
assuming that they can find a way to power up the record player, and find out something about the inhabitants of earth, a civilization that may still be in existence
perhaps by then...many light years ago.

The Voyageur spacecraft record, a Message in a Bottle.
Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages
Sounds of Earth


> Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. *It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system*. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."


http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/scenes.html


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

carverman said:


> I hope that no other civilization out there can interpret his speech. It's interesting though that that radio or analogue TV transmission can still be travelling in outer space
> after all these years. Maybe Churchill's famous speeches too.


I don't think there were intergalactic censors back in the early days of TV. Everything should be going out intact.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Of course, if you think about it, SETI is probably barking up the wrong tree. They are looking for radio signals from other planets...the way we are going, we won't be broadcasting over the air much longer. The "window" for seeing a radio broadcast from our planet may be less than 100 years...pretty small timeframe to detect.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

^ Barking up the wrong tree? Or using the wrong tool of detecting radio signals ... then what do you propose they detect on and with?


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

I'm saying that we won't be broadcasting anymore...once the signals have passed, you won't "hear" them anymore. So, unless you are looking during that 100 year period that the signals are actually passing, you're not going to detect signs of life. Back when they started, I'm sure they assumed we'd be broadcasting forever...but times are a changing.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

^ There is a proposal that SETI might use alternative methods such as laser beams of some sort (as read from the little Astronomy Bible book) to detect those unearthly signals.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Yeah, no garantee anything they try will have better results as we have little idea of the future of technology. The lack of evidence in this case may only be proof that we don't know what to look for.


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