Artist's project to blast gold-plated artifact disc into orbit, page 1

Artist's project to blast gold-plated artifact disc into orbit

www.comp uterworld.com

"The Last Pictures" disc, which could circle the Earth for billions of years, contains just 100 black and white photos.

The project involves attaching a silicon disc encased in gold to the outside of a communications satellite. The disc will include just 100 etched photos, which are meant to be a cultural artifact for aliens to find if mankind is no longer here when they come knocking.

(visit the link for the full news article)

A very interesting project, and one that comes at an interesting time, as 2012 mania lurches into its final throes and, related or not, the deepening spectre of doom continues to grip pessimistic hearts.

Should we all vanish from this planet, The Last Pictures project will provide a haunting final testament in near-space, circtling our planet with images designed to last for five billion years. Will alien eyes ever see them?

The photos range from 17,000-year-old cave paintings to predator drone photos and financial charts. It would be interesting to know what ATS members would choose if they had to select 100 photos to summarize the world as our species sees it. Beyond this, its a haunting project and an attempt to preserve for billions of years our moment in time and space.

www.comp uterworld.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure it will last as long as he hopes.

The European Space Agency is planning missions to take out space junk. The agency's Clean Space initiative plans to tackle the problem directly, by designing dedicated removal missions. Initial plans will see ESA's 2015 Automated Transfer Vehicle (unmanned cargo freighter) include experimental optical sensors, that could be used for future rendezvous with 'unwanted targets'.

www.sen.com...

I saw a documentary where they were trying to work out the best way to remove space debris - nets to trap it, and bring it into the atmosphere to burn up, or robotic arms to grab the debris and direct it towards the atmosphere.

If they did manage to come up with something I don't think they'd take into consideration anything more than if the object is a operational satellite.

There's a lot of crap up there..



^ not a real photo... lol

reply to post by winofiend

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Explosives all around, hopefully something a bit friendlier than nukes to blow up all the big stuff, than a magnet to pull the junk and let all that stuff burn in our atmosphere.

But honestly I think this idea is dumb for now.......who would want to go through all the trash to look for a needle in a haystack

reply to post by silent thunder

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Nice idea,but I thought that satellites had a much shorter lifespan than 100's of years as their orbit decays over time,thus they need to be constantly adjusted to maintain orbit.

What is to stop the same happening to this one-or have I missed something?

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by silent thunder

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Nice idea,but I thought that satellites had a much shorter lifespan than 100's of years as their orbit decays over time,thus they need to be constantly adjusted to maintain orbit.

What is to stop the same happening to this one-or have I missed something?

Satellites at geosynchronous altitude are much, much higher and they therefore experience essentially no orbital drag. They're constantly adjusted so that they hold their orbital slot, geostationary satellites in particular since their purpose requires them to remain at an exact inclination, eccentricity, and semi-major axis. Geosynchronous orbits can technically occur with any inclination and a wide range of eccentricity, but at a fixed semi-major axis. A communications satellite hypothetically abandoned because we're all dead and gone would drift over time due to perturbations caused by the shape of the earth and luni-solar tides, but it would remain aloft until it ran into something, be it another satellite or a sufficiently large meteoroid. At that time the debris would scatter and some of it would end up in a lower orbit where it would eventually decay.

reply to post by ngchunter

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Thank you for the knowledge ngchunter!
That makes sense.

reply to post by silent thunder

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Well, it's a great idea, but I agree with a lot of the comments at the end. His choices of images {from the few we see}, seem to be more of his own private statement and anger with modern times, than say..... telling a story. Who's qualified? Well there's the rub. Hopefully the rest of the images say something about the good in the human race.

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