Sending e-mail into the galaxy

From: Larry Klaes (lklaes@bbn.com)
Date: Mon Aug 02 1999 - 15:33:08 MDT

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http://www10.bentspace.com/

http://www.space.com/business/novelty_space.html

Space Messengers Offer Eternity For a Fee

By Daniel Sorid
Staff Writer

Aug 02 1999 11:38:34 ET

You send an e-mail to a computer in Davis, California. It, in
turn, forwards the message to another computer a few feet away.

It sure doesn’t seem like anything to pay $10.95 for.

But Greg Snow, 40, president of Bentspace.com, is hoping
you’ll give him your credit card number for the opportunity.

The catch: as that computer passes your message along, it’s
doing so with a parabolic antenna that also hurtles the signal,
and your message, into space.

Snow calls it "a gateway to the cosmos."

The space-related novelty gift industry has traditionally
thrived on trinkets, like astronaut pens and patches, and
mock real estate deeds to cosmic bodies.

But a new breed of companies that promise to send your name,
message, or image to space, has recently begun popping up.

Space messaging companies hope to capitalize on the mystique
of space and a human desire for adventure and eternity. The
appeal of signing one’s name across a pioneering space mission,
or having a personal signal travelling the heavens in perpetuity,
has caught the attention of entrepreneurs.

There's also the hope that a faraway being may someday come
decode the messages.

"I think it’s human nature to want to leave your mark on the
cosmos," Snow says. "It’s a message in a bottle."

In July, Dojin Limited purchased room for its "digital
passenger" CD-ROMs on what could be the first private-sector
space exploration mission. For $54.95, Dojin will save your
photo and some text onto the CD-ROM, which will travel with
the spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid.

"Represent the human race," its Web page coos. "Your place in
eternity awaits you."

But profits are still to come. Snow and his four partners,
for instance, have shelled out about $70,000 for Bentspace.
If it’s any indication of hopes for success, Snow hasn't quit
his day job.

"I have no expectation, I really don’t," says Snow, who also
runs an online computer shop. "My experience with the Internet
leads me to not even know. We’ll see if it does capture the
public’s imagination."

Dojin President Richard Barrett III says the company has
already made several thousand sales, but needs 10,000 to
break even.

Another space messaging project begun by French artist
Jean-Marc Philippe offers to put your message, in digital
form, on a capsule that would be launched in 2001 and
programmed to return to Earth 50,000 years later.

Unlike the others, KEO, as the mission is called, is free.

Phillipe writes on KEO’s Web site that he hopes the mission
will serve as a "globally appealing metaphor that would help
ignite … universal reflection."

Fifty-thousand years, he adds, is "a distance in time that
is so vertiginous and mind-boggling that it compels us to
abandon our normal points of reference and puts us all on
equal footing, forcing us to reach down into our imaginations
or deep convictions."

To a degree, KEO has succeeded. The mission has drawn entries
from 86 countries, and has been featured by CNN, Reuters, and
Discover magazine.

NASA also offers its own program, plainly named "Send Your
Name to Mars." On a special Web page, you can have your name
included on a CD-ROM that will travel on NASA’s Mars Explorer
mission, scheduled for 2001.

Like KEO, it’s free. But there is some question about how that
one is going to work. It seems the data on NASA’s CD-ROM will
be destroyed by solar radiation unless it is shielded, and no
decision on that has been made just yet.

The space agency may have been the first to complete this kind
of mission. On January 3, 1999, NASA sent more than 930,000
names on a CD it attached to its Mars Polar Lander.

That mission proved that message-bearing spacecraft appeal
to more than just space buffs and science fiction devotees.
NASA’s offering, which was initially geared towards kids, was
opened to all after adults started bombarding the site with
requests, according to John Lee, the administrator of
the program.

Such broad interest may explain why for-profit companies are
sprouting despite competition with free programs with virtually
the same offerings.

Still, space messaging is, in essence, a specially-marketed
variant of modern-day electronics. Many phone and television
signals use satellites for transmission; a satellite used
for Internet service may even have brought you the words of
this article.

But this hasn’t stopped Bentspace, which sends its first
message on August 17. As for why anyone would pay $10.95 to
send some bytes of data into space, the company curtly replies:

"Each of us will have our own reason. And that's reason enough."