Wikipedia May Get Delivered To The Moon (wikimedia.org) 52
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."
Vandals, go! (Score:3)
Now is your chance to send your message to the moon.
Bigelow Aerospace should be helping (Score:2)
Re: Bigelow Aerospace should be helping (Score:2)
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Or is it the most unintentionally hilarious thing I've read so far today? Sometimes the line is very blurred.
I went with hilarious. Boy you need a lot of hubris to make that kind of statement, try making say a 14nm CPU or Boeing 747 from Wikipedia and see how far you get...
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no, some pages are locked just because people who have the actual facts keep changing them away from what the ignorant community wants. many topics don't have wikipedia articles because young people think all human knowledge is on the internet, so if a topic doesn't appear in a google search it must not exist nor need encyclopedia article.
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I don't know what "crystal disc" you're talking about, but it sounds like they're using M-DISC [wikipedia.org]. It's basically engraved into a ceramic layer.
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this stuff?
How about a new Rosetta Stone (Score:3)
I'm thinking a Humankind Rosetta stone. All known past and present writing systems spelling out the same message. Same with mathematical systems.
Re: How about a new Rosetta Stone (Score:2)
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That's not completely true - Mandarin Chinese has stricter grammar than Cantonese. There are different conventions for how things are phrased. They're definitely mutually intelligible and very similar when written, but they end up sounding odd if you try to read one as the other.
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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.
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Clearly, it must have an eighth side where the joke is explained.
Okay... why? (Score:2)
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.
Re: Okay... why? (Score:2)
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leave us
Would this be for us?
20GB ? (Score:2)
Why is there only 20GB of space?
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Because they need the rest for the actual mission?
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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?
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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
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its a self serving wank project anyway so who cares how long it lasts
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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
Great idea! (Score:2)
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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.
I nominate this article... (Score:4, Funny)
Moon Demons Can't Read. (Score:2)
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In lunar space, nobody can hear you read a book.
Future News (Score:3, Funny)
"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...."
Select randomly (Score:2)
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
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deliver it to the moon (Score:1)
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.
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Ok, crazy person, let me get this straight. Basic tenants of peer review and institutionally supported science are "lol", but a website that says;-
Great just what we need a new bunch of Lunatics (Score:1)
The More Important Story (Score:1)