February 23, 2002

7:53 PM

Keo Satellite to Carry Messages to Earth's Future A nonprofit French group hopes to launch a satellite on a 50,000-year spin around Earth next year, loading it with as many as 6 billion messages from humans eager to give the far-flung future a glimpse of the present.
posted by Tarrama (6 comments total)

NEAT! I love it, those crazy fench should do this more often. We should call them the Friendsh. Seriously.
posted by untuckedshirts at 8:48 PM on February 23, 2002

"There is no doubt, however, that restrictive measures will be taken to prevent this, since space debris is not only endangering the operation of costly military, scientific and commercial satellites, but more importantly, threatening the lives of astronauts in space shuttles and stations. Thus, the big spatial groups like the NASA or the ESA are already developing programmes to "clean" this debris. This is the reason why we consider this risk as non significant."

That's pretty optimistic. An orbiting time capsule is a cute idea, but I'm skeptical that it can work.
posted by homunculus at 8:53 PM on February 23, 2002

We should call them the Friendsh.

Drop the 'r' and the 'h' and I'll agree.
posted by homunculus at 8:55 PM on February 23, 2002

You know, every once in a while I think that the current era may be the first one that will cause cultural anthropologists of the future to go, "Enough with the contemporaneous source material already! Jesus, give it a rest!"
posted by umberto at 9:18 PM on February 23, 2002

Like anybody in the year 52002 will care what the arrogant fools in 2002 have to say.

I'm sending in blank messages.
posted by Down10 at 6:20 PM on February 24, 2002

Like anybody in the year 52002 will care what the arrogant fools in 2002 have to say.

If we found messages from 50000 years ago, I daresay we would care.

I'm sending in blank messages.

A blank message is still a message.
posted by rodii at 8:11 PM on February 24, 2002