Starship To Carry Dna Into Deep Space
Florida Today
A starship destined for deep space soon will be boarding at a South American spaceport, and anyone with $60 can hitch a ride.
Genetically speaking, that is.
In a bizarre but potentially lucrative business venture, a spacecraft carrying the DNA of up to 4.5 million people will be launched in 2001 on a mission aimed at making contact with an alien civilization.
About 50,000 people - including famed science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and Alan Ladwig, NASA's chief of plans and policy - already have signed up. The company staging the flight expects that number to soar.
After all, you don't need a travel agent or a lot of money to book passage. A mere $49.95, plus $9.95 shipping and handling, will do.
"There is an intense amount of public interest in space, and when you add
the element of being part of the mission, that's really the charm of it,"
said Charles Chafer, president of Encounter 2001 LLC, the company sponsoring
the flight.
"An awful lot of people just like the notion of making a statement, of
reaching out and knowing there's at least a small chance they'll be the ones
to make first contact with another civilization."
The aliens, meanwhile, might be laying in wait.
As part of the deal, the company will beam up a hailing signal from a Ukrainian radio telescope May 24.
Targeted at distant stars that might harbor habitable planets, the high-power transmission will include greetings from those who have signed up for the flight. It will be repeated in February 2000 and February 2001.
"The cosmic calls are sort of a precursor to the mission itself, messages of
introduction," Chafer said. "In effect, we're saying, `Ready or not, here we
come.' "
The so-called "Milliennial Voyage" will set sail from French Guiana.
The cruise ship will be a small spacecraft that will carry the written messages, drawings, photos and DNA - in the form of human hair samples - on a journey out of the solar system.
First stop will be a transfer orbit 22,300 miles above Earth. A European Ariane rocket will haul the tiny emissary there after launch from Kourou Space Center.
Next will be a two-year journey to Jupiter. Caught up in the gravity of the giant planet, the 337-pound spacecraft ultimately will be flung on an unguided trajectory out of the solar system and into the unknown beyond.
"It becomes kind of a cosmic message in a bottle at that point," Chafer
said. "And I think there's a lot of charm in not knowing exactly where it's
going, other than it's leaving the solar system with as many as 4.5 million
of our closest friends on board."
Peculiar space projects are nothing new to the Encounter 2001 group. The company is an offshoot of Celestis Inc., the Houston company that staged the world's first "space burial" in 1997.
For $4,800 each, Celestis launched the cremated remains of 1960s pop guru Timothy Leary, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 22 others into low Earth orbit.
The Encounter 2001 mission might prove to be even more profitable.
Market studies done by the company indicate that somewhere between 1.5 million and 4.5 million people might take part in the flight.
The upper-end estimate would generate about $225 million.
"I can tell you the entire mission, spacecraft and launch costs, will be
well under $20 million," Chafer said. "So it could be a very profitable
business."
Encounter 2001 is billing the flight as "the first interstellar mission for everyone who believes that intelligent life exists beyond the solar system."
To take part, customers pay $49.95, plus shipping and handling for a poster,
a membership card, a flight reservation certificate, a lapel pin, an
"archival form" for a photograph and message, and a DNA sampling kit.
The DNA kit is nothing more than a small plastic bag for hair samples, which are a fertile source of DNA, the fundamental building block of all life on Earth.
The painful part: plucking six strands of hair, root and all.
"You have to get the root, that's the little bulb on the end, because that's
where the best DNA is contained," Chafer said. "We've got a great picture of
someone doing that to Arthur C. Clarke."
The hair samples are bagged by the customer and sent back to the company. A California lab then will use an 11-step process to dry, preserve and package the roots in batches of 10,000.
Flying along with the hair samples will be the content of all the archival forms, which will be scanned onto a CD hardened to withstand radiation.
The single-page documents contain the customer's name, address, country, planet, date of birth, gender, signature and mug shot.
There also is space for poetry, prose, musical scores and artwork or the type of written message penned by Clarke: "Fare well, my clone!"
Presumably, any advanced civilization that intercepted the Encounter 2001 spacecraft might be technically capable of extracting and cloning the DNA samples.
And perhaps it's the shot at interstellar immortality that explains why customers are clamoring to join the Encounter 2001 flight crew.
"The response has been phenomenal," said company spokeswoman Susan
Schonfeld. "People are just fascinated with space and space travel, and this
truly is a way for the general public to participate."
Make sure you read the fine print, though.
The company is negotiating with zoos around the world, so the essence of your humanity might end up commingled with the DNA of lions and tigers and bears.
"We're hoping to have the animal kingdom represented on the flight, too,"
Schonfeld said. "It will be almost like a Noah's Ark from Earth going into
deep space."
For more details on the mission, call (800) ORBIT-11 or visit www.Encounter2001.com on the Web.
(Copyright 1999)
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Publication Date: May 03, 1999
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Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
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