Singatures Disk, About Cassini DVD Options

[dilo]

Far from today's news...
Do you recall that a DVD disk was placed onboard the Cassini spacecraft, containing the signatures from 616,420 people around the world?
DVD with signatures on way to Saturn
I sent my signature, and I bet that I'm not the only one in this Forum...
Now, do someone knows if there is an online viewable copy of DVD? I would like very much to check my name (probably not easy to find...!)
Marco.

[elakdawalla]

I finally found my copy of the disk. It contains 27,000 separate TIFF files. An example taken at random from the U.K. folder:



(I blacked out the addresses on the postcards.)

So...I do have access to a complete copy of all the signatures. However, searching it for specific ones would be very tedious. The TIFF files are sorted by country, and, within the US, by state, but other than that there's no identifying information connected with each file. Sorry to disappoint. I'd be happy to place a copy of the contents of the disk online, but I'm a little worried about posting all the addresses on the postcards. They are 8 years old, but...

If anyone knows someone who wants to pull and catalog hundreds of thousands of signatures from among 27,000 individual tiff files, send them to me!

Emily

[mchan]

So...I do have access to a complete copy of all the signatures.  However, searching it for specific ones would be very tedious.  The TIFF files are sorted by country, and, within the US, by state, but other than that there's no identifying information connected with each file.  Sorry to disappoint.  I'd be happy to place a copy of the contents of the disk online, but I'm a little worried about posting all the addresses on the postcards.  They are 8 years old, but...

I had sent my signature in and would like to check if it made it on to the disk. So I would like a copy of the disk to search.

However, when you got the copy of the disk at the conference, was there any accomanying document describing its use? E.g., you may not reproduce, exhibit, etc. You may want to check with Legal before putting it online.

Mike

[ljk4-1]

When and if the disc is ever recovered from Cassini, does anyone honestly think a future civilization will be able to read a DVD, even an advanced technical one that could pluck a spacecraft from around Saturn? And what will a bunch of names and addresses mean centuries hence - to say nothing if it is found by an ETI.

[mchan]

When and if the disc is ever recovered from Cassini, does anyone honestly think a future civilization will be able to read a DVD, even an advanced technical one that could pluck a spacecraft from around Saturn?  And what will a bunch of names and addresses mean centuries hence - to say nothing if it is found by an ETI.

It is not so much a meams of sending information to a future civilization as it is an expression of support and participation from people today who were not directly working on the project. For myself, it also expresses a thought of having another something I did be around long after I am gone. I.e., if Cassini stays in Saturn orbit for centuries and is recovered and put into a museum. The meaning centuies hence might be akin to the meaning of undeciphered hieroglyphics on an antiquity of today.

Mike

[ljk4-1]

It is not so much a meams of sending information to a future civilization as it is an expression of support and participation from people today who were not directly working on the project.  For myself, it also expresses a thought of having another something I did be around long after I am gone.  I.e., if Cassini stays in Saturn orbit for centuries and is recovered and put into a museum.  The meaning centuies hence might be akin to the meaning of undeciphered hieroglyphics on an antiquity of today.

Mike

I actually hope that Cassini and other such spacecraft are left in space, where they will be much better preserved than stuck in some glass case on a planet's surface. If a civilization has the means to reach these probes to do such a thing, they can also study them thorougly in space and then let them be for someone or something else to find to learn something about us.

[Bob Shaw]

I actually hope that Cassini and other such spacecraft are left in space, where they will be much better preserved than stuck in some glass case on a planet's surface.  If a civilization has the means to reach these probes to do such a thing, they can also study them thorougly in space and then let them be for someone or something else to find to learn something about us.

Cassini, and the rest of them, *should* all end up safely in museums, but *should* also be left in place. How? You build the museum around the antique spacecraft! Thus we have on-site interpretation, preservation, and education...

...of course, it'll take a while for the museums to be built - consider the CDs to be the foundation stones!

[ljk4-1]

Cassini, and the rest of them, *should* all end up safely in museums, but *should* also be left in place. How? You build the museum around the antique spacecraft!  Thus we have on-site interpretation, preservation, and education...

...of course, it'll take a while for the museums to be built - consider the CDs to be the foundation stones!

I did not recommend that spacecraft currently in space be placed in museums, even ones surrounding them in space itself. How can we learn about interstellar debris impact rates and such for our future star probes if we "protect" our ancient craft? Besides, the near vacuum of space will be its best protection.

By the time we have the technology to find and study such vessels, on-site analysis techniques should be more than sufficient to give our descendants all the data they need on the craft.

See this online article about Space Archaeology here for a description of what I mean:

http://www.archaeology.org/0411/etc/space.html

If they want to put them in museums after all that, it will be mainly for sentimental reasons. Otherwise they should be left in space where they will be much better preserved for far longer.

The Pioneer and Voyager probes are estimated to have a survival rate of 1 billion years in deep space.

Going back to the topic of messages and such on discs, I say again that the value of preserving our culture and history in deep space necessitates that these messages discs have far more important information on them than a bunch of signatures and trite statements.

If you want to have a separate disc with just that for the purpose of making people feel a part of the mission, that is fine (my name can be found on a number of such discs in deep space and on other worlds), but there should be a message container with pertinent information about us to preserve for the future, as nothing on Earth will last as long. This is vitally important both for our descendants and the possibility that ETI may find them as well.

Sadly, most time capsules and items placed in foundation stones are essentially fluff of little use to historians. For some ways to see how it should and should not be done, read here:

http://davidszondy.com/future/timecapsule/timecapsules.htm

One example of good information preservation has been done on the ESA Rosetta comet probe with the Rosetta Project disc, which has preserved thousands of human languages. Just imagine how important that will be for future societies studying us, or for an ETI trying to decipher us.

http://www.rosettaproject.org/live

The Pioneer Plaques were a fine start for saying something about us for ages in a scientific fashion, and the Voyager Interstellar Records are the literal gold standard for how such messages should be constructed and utilized for future messages and historical preservation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Some have said that more modern technology could preserve every scrap of human history on a single disc these days. This may be true, but how would it be organized properly to be understood, and more importantly, will it be readable by a future humanity or ETI, to say nothing of comprehensible?

The Voyager Records have the virtue of being able to at least produce the sounds, music, and languages by the mere placing of the also stored stylus or some kind of needle in the grooves and spinning the record. Can't do that with a DVD or CD-ROM.

Also, the DVDs can be destroyed by radiation, which is in abundant in space and around and on the planets. So even those mere signatures may be destroyed long before anyone can come along to read them, ruining any chance of any kind of message or preservation to the future.

Has TPS or any other group that works on such discs thought about how to better preserve our messages to the future so that they are still there ages hence? Carving in rock may seem primitive, but how much less would we know about Sumer and other such cultures if they had put all their writings on paper?

As for the benefits of sending physical messages across space, see this informative Web site:

http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~crose/cgi-bin/cosmicB.html