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Stamping your footprints on the surface of the moon remains an impossible goal for almost everyone over the age of two. But for $ 99, you may be able to leave a DNA fingerprint.
A startup called LifeShip is preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign to send the biological source code of its crowd-backers on a full moon shot. An investment of less than one hundred dollars could ensure that your unique DNA not only reaches the moon, but remains safe and unemotional in the face of the threat of a natural disaster or nuclear holocaust, for millennia.
How cheap? DNA does not take up much space, or should we say space, when hitching to our largest natural satellite. LifeShip is working with Arch Mission to develop a way to package DNA samples into blocks of epoxy resin for preservation during travel and landing, and for survival among dusty craters.
Arch Mission is the organization that produced the lunar library – an analog and digital archive of human history and civilization saved on nickel discs – which was included in the Israeli mission Moon earlier this year. Launched on a Space X rocket, the archives – and the probe with which it was associated – unfortunately arrived in front of a harvester while they accidentally settled on the moon at about 500 km / h.
Along with the lunar library, Arch Mission included a small amount of experimental epoxy resin containing millions of cells from humans and other organisms, as well as the famous eight-legged water inhabitant who then provoked controversial.
LifeShip founder, Ben Haldeman, assures potential participants concerned about the contamination of the non-existent ecosystem of the Moon that DNA does not work this way: it's not alive, for starters .
His interest in the artificial amber of Arch Mission is how he can protect his microscopic cargo from the damage caused by radiation. As he told IEEE Spectrum magazine: "We will store the DNA in a dry place and will have several thousand copies of each person's DNA. some of them, there should still be redundancy. "
Arch Mission insists that "amber" is still in development, but Haldeman is eager to start sending DIY DNA collection kits by the end of this year. If all goes as planned, LifeShip could begin sending regular shipments of DNA to the moon, as individuals are willing to archive and back up their bio-master plan out of the world for a while. million or two years.
It is far from engraving your face at the laser full moon or buying a certificate that boasts the property of a square foot of lunar real estate. But at least a few of you could actually get there. ®
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