Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space Google

Wikipedia May Get Delivered To The Moon (wikimedia.org) 52

Posted by EditorDavid from the the-final-frontier dept.
A new Meta page on Wikimedia.org reports: "A group of science enthusiasts from Berlin, Germany, are planning to send their own custom-built rover to the Moon. And they want to take Wikipedia with them." Sort of. Wikimedia Deutschland has been offered space on a data disc to be carried by one of the five image-gathering rovers still competing to land on the Moon by 2017 for the Google Lunar XPRIZE challenge. But there's only 20 gigabytes of space, so they're calling on the Wikipedia communities to agree on which content should be included by June 24. "Even if only a snapshot of Wikipedia can be brought to the Moon, its content will equal a genuine snapshot of the sum of all human knowledge..." the Meta page explains "This is an anniversary gift to all Wikipedia communities all over the world."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Wikipedia May Get Delivered To The Moon More

Wikipedia May Get Delivered To The Moon

Comments Filter:

  • Vandals, go! (Score:3)

    by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Saturday April 23, 2016 @02:35PM (#51973351)

    Now is your chance to send your message to the moon.

  • Seriously, if I were Bigelow, I would be thinking in terms of what parts of the net are vittle and useful. Wikipedia actually IS both vittle and useful.

  • How about a new Rosetta Stone (Score:3)

    by Woldscum ( 1267136 ) on Saturday April 23, 2016 @03:05PM (#51973485)

    I'm thinking a Humankind Rosetta stone. All known past and present writing systems spelling out the same message. Same with mathematical systems.

    • Sure, with seven sides: English, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Arabic and Twitter.

      • I'm talking about every system mankind knows. Like Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, Greek, Cuneiform, Nordic runes, Arabic, etc and each language that uses each system. Greek, Roman, Indian, etc. number systems.

  • Putting a plaque on the moon made sense. We needed to show we'd made it that far.

    Why do we need "the sum of human knowledge" up there, though? I mean, if aliens stop by to have a look when we're not around, they're probably not going to look at the moon first. It's orbiting something much more interesting.
    • Let's see: no plate tectonics, no volcanic activity, no erosion (at least none due to wind and rain), no atmosphere to oxidize materials, no storms, no flooding, no forest fires, no chaos (except deadly charged particles) and no conflict... at least not until seventy-five years after she's been colonized. :)

  • Why is there only 20GB of space?

    • Because they need the rest for the actual mission?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        According to NASA, it costs $10,000 to get 1 lb into space.

        http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/astp.html_prt.htm

        A microSD card weighs 0.5 grams. 10000/454 is about $20 per gram, so it costs ten bucks to get that microSD card up there. A $50 card can easily hold 128GB. So yes - why is there only 20GB?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          You're not going to launch a microSD card if you want something to last for millenia. You're going to launch something like M-DISC. Which from the links is what it sounds like they're launching.

          Furthermore, we're not talking about getting something into "space", or even LEO (FYI typical costs are $10k/kg to LEO, not per pound, although Russian/Chinese launchers and SpaceX are cheaper). We're talking about to the lunar surface. That's significantly more delta-V. The disc is about 16 grams. Cost to luna

    • only? you have no idea how much data that is, do you? the 32 volume Encyclopedia Britannica weighed 129 lbs, but fits on a 4.7GB DVD with room left over for the student and elementary versions of the encyclopedia, four dictionaries, thesaurus, world atlas, classic literature collection...etc and etc The text for the set is less than 1GB

  • Now if humanity destroys itself, aliens can find out about our civilization preserved on whatever format that won't have bit rot. They're preserving it in a format without bit rot, right?

    • Yes and no. They are taking bit rot and modification into account. They will slam 20 gigabytes of rockets(one per bit) into the surface of the moon. The moon itself will store the data. Reading might appear to be tricky but some good cameras, and a sensible starting location (clockwise starting at Apollo 11) would work.

  • It needs to be an audio book.

  • Future News (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday April 23, 2016 @06:17PM (#51974443) Homepage

    "And in Future News, in response to the hack of Wikipedia's servers and the discovery that their offsite backup service was a scam, the Wikimedia foundation has launched the new Wikimedia Lunar X-Prize, for the first team who can travel to the moon, retrieve a data disc and return it safely to Earth...."

  • If it was up to me, I would select a handful or articles to describe what was being done (i.e., one on wikipedia, one on the Moon, one on the Lunar X prize, one on whatever Apollo mission they are going to land near, maybe one on Germany, no more than order 10 at all) and then select items randomly until the 20 GB was used up.

    We seriously don't know what the "audience" would want to read about; doing it randomly would to some degree avoid the "they included all this junk no one cares about, and totally negl

    • Have you ever explored the Random Article button? It seems that Wikipedia is composed 5% of stub articles on UK rail stations, football clubs, and football players

  • then they can see what retards the public knowledge base was made from. the whole thing is littered with censorship, propaganda and void of real science.

    trade secrets, classified information, and anything deemed 'self research' or 'fringe science' or 'unpopular' is removed. lol.

    obamasweapon.com [obamasweapon.com] drrobertduncan.com [drrobertduncan.com]

    it's basically like a DARPA project to brainwash the masses and hide information from the general populous.

    • Anything deemed 'self research' or 'fringe science' or 'unpopular' is removed. lol.

      Ok, crazy person, let me get this straight. Basic tenants of peer review and institutionally supported science are "lol", but a website that says;-

      "Who wants to be pulvarized, pressurized, raped, and hurt with electronic warfare/interferometry (projected radiation) without their consent, in total secrecy? It's happening to me right now. :)" is not "lol".

      Get some Thorazine dude, it helps.

      Is not s

  • Great just what we need a new bunch of Lunatics editing Wikipedia. For the grammar or humor impaired Luna means moon. Lunatics could then mean moon people. Tim S.
  • Isn't the more important story that "A group of science enthusiasts from Berlin, Germany, are planning to send their own custom-built rover to the Moon?" Or, if they take wikipedia to the moon and no one is there to read it?

Slashdot Top Deals

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

Close