From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sun Mar 06 2005 - 14:20:39 PST
http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/NEWS02/503060320/1007 March 6, 2005
Send your photos, videos spacebound
BY TODD HALVORSON
CAPE CANAVERAL - Some might call it throwing money into a black hole. Others, a cosmic message-in-a-bottle. Jim Lewis and Deep Space Communications Network consider it a chance to contact life elsewhere in the universe.
Prices aren't set yet, but the Cape Canaveral company is offering to beam digital text, still photos, audio and video to the edge of the solar system and beyond.
Clients could send poetry, the works of William Shakespeare, or the text of the Bible or the Koran.
They could beam up pictures of junior's bar mitzvah, the giant pumpkin that took first place at the county fair, or that self-portrait little Sally drew in kindergarten.
The radio broadcast of War of the Worlds could be transmitted or a series of heartbeats representing prime numbers.
You could even send video clips of stupid pet tricks, every episode of "I Love Lucy" or the classic movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
But it will be much cheaper just to dispatch a simple message like, "Is Anyone Out There?"
"We're serious about this. But we're not so serious that we
"I think there's always a possibility of extraterrestrial life out there, and who knows, we might touch it. Or it could be your message that touches it."
Strange as it seems, Deep Space Communications Network is for real.
The company is an offshoot of Communications Concepts Inc., a group that has produced live television coverage of shuttle launches for NASA, CNN, BBC and networks around the world. It recently finished three national television commercials for Sears and has worked with Lockheed Martin and Boeing among others.
Subsidiary Deep Space Communications Network formed in January and plans to use a dish-shaped television antenna to transmit messages one to three light years from Earth.
"In the intergalactic world, that's not very far, I guess," Lewis said. "But to me, one to three light years -- which is quite a number of miles -- is pretty good anyway."
A light year is the distance light travels in a year, or 5.9 billion miles.
Lewis recently tested the market on Internet auction site eBay, posting an item titled "Call an Extraterrestrial: An opportunity to make a personal transmission into space."
Deep Space Communications offered to transmit a 75-word text message in several languages and basic computer code as well as five digital pictures and a five-minute video.
The company promised a certificate of authenticity to document the date and time of the transmission, location, azimuth and elevation of the satellite dish antenna and broadcast frequency.
The bidding opened Feb. 20 at $89 and rose to $345 by Feb. 26. About 1,200 people from the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe dropped in on the auction. There were 64 bids.
A back-and-forth battle between two bidders drove the price to $1,225.
The winner: Jim Buckmaster, chief executive officer of craigslist.org, an online community of eight million people in 19 countries and 99 cities. The site includes classified listings for jobs, housing and goods as well as personals and forums.
A user tipped Buckmaster to the quirky item. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of enabling people to be among "the first to beam Internet postings and classified ads into space."
The chances of a reply are slim, but "something above absolute zero," Buckmaster said. "It's kind of like the Lotto. If you don't play, you can't win, and you know, our users are accustomed to long shots."
Some 10,000 people signed up to have their craigslist postings and ads sent into deep space in just the first 24 hours.
The demand prompted Buskmaster and Lewis to modify the deal to transmit more than the 75 words auctioned.
A billion words would be a better estimate, Buckmaster guessed.
The transmission will take place about May 15 to coincide with the planned launch of Discovery on NASA's first post-
Still in question: The market for such a service. It "could be the pet rock of outer space," Lewis said.
Deep Space Communications plans to post prices and order forms at www.deepspacecom.net<http://www.deepspacecom.net/> in the next 30 days.
"I'm not saying that it's going to be a major business model for us," he said, "but it's something we're going to continue doing for a while and see how it works
Contact Halvorson at 639-0576 or thalvorson_at_flatoday.net<mailto:thalvorson_at_flatoday.net>
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: Mon Mar 07 2005 - 11:46:45 PST
FLORIDA TODAY
don't have a little fun with it, too," said Lewis, managing partner of the company.
Columbia shuttle mission.
out."