A new lunar mission is giving us the opportunity to put photos, memories and DNA on the moon in return for a donation towards the project. But do we really want to send our hair on a lunar flight?
Video: promotional video from Lunar Mission One
The ambitious British-led consortium is hoping to raise £500m to fund the scheme, which will result in a robotic probe landing on the moon in ten years time.
Lunar Mission One is aiming for the south pole of the moon and will drill deep into the surface to study rocks that are believed to be four billion years old.
But the scheme, which is backed by some of Britain’s most famous scientists and institutions, has a radical new approach to funding: it is asking for financial help from the public.
Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to fund space exploration that is solely for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding as opposed to commercial return David Iron
The aim of the initial phase is to raise £600,000 in 28 days through KickStarter – a model where the money is first pledged, and is only donated by individuals if the total sum is raised. The scheme’s Kickstarter page asks visitors to “be part of history“.
For £3, donors will receive the “eternal thanks” of the founders, while £60 will get donors a voucher for a “digital memory box” allowing them to upload anything they want to be sent to space.
Higher donations reserve more space on the memory disks, and in later stages of the mission, donors will be able to buy an immortality of sorts by reserving physical space on the robot for a strand of hair, which is believed to survive for a billion years.
The biggest donation available on Kickstarter in the initial phase is for £5,000 and buys a place in the viewing gallery to watch the spacecraft landing.
British engineer and city financier David Iron, who came up with the plan, said: “People can put any information they like in the memory disc; it will be like a personal time capsule, a private archive. It could be a small message saying ‘Hi, I’m Joe’ or a whole family history.
“Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to fund space exploration that is solely for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding as opposed to commercial return.”
The mission has the backing of Professor Brian Cox, historian Dan Snow, the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, and Open University’s Professor Monica Grady.
Organisers said they did a lot of research to see if this was something people would be interested in enough to fund. But @channel4news followers on Twitter did not seem too keen…
@Channel4News No. Leave the moon alone.
— Sarah Hamilton (@thereadingscoop) November 19, 2014
@Channel4News No. This is misguided. The scientists are still drunk on success of Rosetta & Philae. They’ll sober up & regret suggestion.
— Mark Gleaves (@MarkGleaves) November 19, 2014
@Channel4News definitely not. Enough trash on this planet without sending it to the moon. Anyway, the discs may be obsolete in a few years!
— Wendy redRobin (@Wendy_redRobin) November 19, 2014
New archiving solution? â??@Channel4News: A British-led group are selling space on memory discs to be buried on the moon. #c4newsâ?
— Lindsey Stewart (@_lindseystewart) November 19, 2014
@Channel4News Definitely!
— Rebecca Steiner (@beckysteiner103) November 19, 2014
@Channel4News fancy helping me to save the NHS
— Serbastain (@serbastainnato) November 19, 2014