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Write Your Valentine On a Spacecraft
GingerSnaps writes "Looking for something more fun and less predictable than roses and chocolates this Valentine's Day? Write your love on the side of a satellite. This unusual approach to courting comes courtesy of students at MIT and Georgia Tech, as part of a larger initiative to pay for their research spacecraft, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite. For a tax-deductible donation anyone can post a picture or message of choice on the spacecraft. All donations help the students pay for the development and construction of their Earth-orbiting satellite, to be launched in 2010. The data gathered will be critical to preparing for human missions to Mars and beyond."
Nothing says "I love you" like etching your girlfriend's name onto a cold metal construct and shooting it into the black oblivion of space.
Some attitudes replaced or by cgi optimizes
Exploded...
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My love for thee burns like the flames of re-entry
http://www.yournameintospace.org/step2_individuals .php
For invdividuals anyways.
The people who are willing to give their girlfriends the "gift" of writing their names on the sides of spacecraft..... aren't usually the type of people that have girlfriends.
All of the sudden I imagined a satellite, polluted with advertising, very much like a NASCAR race car.
Now if only there was someone up there to read those advertisements, we would have reached Mars a long time ago.
Mike or Joel?
God spoke to me.
Mod this up if you dislike Valentines day. Mod this down if you like Valentines day.
~= scwizard =~
The number one most popular message: "i 3 righty"
Number two: "fsck me tubgirl"
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
And I, for one, welcome our new [insert description] overlords.
Meh misread the title of the article... "To my one and only love. For Valentines, I've decided to get as far as humanly possible from you..."
"Yes, how much to put a message on your satellite?"
"It's VERY expensive."
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
....women buy the men chocolate for Valentine's Day. True story. Just thought I'd throw that out there for all you males across the world dishing out lots of cash on chocolates, roses, and names on the side of space craft!
okinawa japan
I guess I could be wrong, but doesn't 'spacecraft' carry the connotation that the vehicle carries a human cargo, or at least is piloted by one?
Triv
I don't know whether to write something about Linux or Star Trek :(
Write my love on the side of a satellite...anyone have a kleenex?
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Whats Valentine ? I've been on Slashdot for 5 years and I've never heard about it. Does it run Linux ?
And I assure you that a girl would like a dozen of long stem roses way more than a message on the side of a spacecraft
It doesn't matter how original a message or image someone comes up with to be inscribed on the craft, Banksy will probably tag it after launch.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
My love for thee burns like the flames of re-entry
...of Space Shuttle Columbia.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
... unfortunately, from the married 40 year old, not the cute single 24 year old ("giri choco" = chocolate given out of social obligation, not from an expression of personal interest). I'm now socially obligated to get her something white about a month from now.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
You've changed like 20 time of girlfriend (well maybe not the crow at slashdot...)
but you better choose all your girlfriends with the same (an even better a common) name.
I love you mary
This satellite think is even worse than getting a tattoo! At least you can erase a tattoo or if you're lucky you can change "Bob loves Ann" into "Bob loves Angela", but it's going to be pretty difficult to go to space and make the modifications.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That's all we need now.
You fools! Don't you see what's happening?
1. The MIT team is raising money for a satellite that will go to Mars.
2. They are getting people to give them the names of their Valentine's to put on the side of another satellite.
3. People who would pay for something like this are geeks; geeks are mostly males; and most males are attracted to women.
4. Ergo, a team of scientists with STRONG MARTIAN CONNECTIONS is collecting the names of hundreds--maybe even thousands--of EARTH WOMEN.
That's right-- MIT IS HELPING MARTIANS STEAL EARTH WOMEN!
(Don't believe me? Here's photographic proof.
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
Finally, a way for the slashdot crowd to display their love, that isn't banned by their restraining orders.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
if i had a girlfriend.......ah well
"Stallman says add to this code and you are one of us. Gates says use this code and you belong to us."
Where is Ender?
I for one do not think my beloved would like her name to be forever etched into something with "Mars Gravity" in its name. Maybe its just me, but I reckon she might take it as an insult.
Nothing witty
How about a solid square of colour? If we co-ordinated our efforts, we could cover the thing in goatse-pixels.
Is it 1st April or something?
For free I was able to have my signature orbiting Saturn. It's been there awhile, too. This pipsqueak private satellite has a 100-1 shot of even making it to Mars orbit.
And Valentine's Day? Let's just say my hotties call me Titan.
http://svghearts.com/
Spend your Valentines At The Zoo! and go with some chocolate, some bubbly, and watch the animals mate... Maybe even get a wiff of some pooh, with your candelite dinner at midnight at the zoo.
ménage à trois in the reptile house anyone?
Aw crap! I forgot to get a girlfriend again!
Is I am going through the same thing, all I can say is... "You are my hero"!
Must... resist.... temptation....
Yeah, and insects' pollination is the plant equivalent of a blow-/hand- job !!!
...too late !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!
What a welcome surprise! Finally, MIT focuses interest on what really makes the world go 'round. Of course they still seem much more interested in going 'round it (or making something inanimate go 'round it) but studying mating behavior of others is a hopeful step toward actually doing it.
The results could be hard to publish, tho -- launching the research data into space will make peer review a tad difficult.
But maybe the secondary mission is to deliver courtship advice to the Martians.
Can't wait to be able to write "I'm lovin it" on the tits of a Mars girl.
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Skyrockets in flight... afternoon delight!
"Wire your love on the side of a satellite. This unusual approach..."
Mine's blonde.
Thanks guys, you just saved me $35 !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Honey, it's time to come home now. Love, Your Wife
Lane Myer: I have great fear of tools. I once made a birdhouse in woodshop and the fair housing committee condemned it.
Wow. I just scanned the entire page (at +1, I admit), and it appears this is the closest thing to serious comment in the entire discussion, except perhaps for the irrelevant mention of space junk a few threads down.
I just wanted to comment on what an ambitious student project this is. Typically when schools do space-related projects, it's a tiny cubesat, a single component or experiment on a larger spacecraft, or assisting a NASA project, like interning at Jet Propulsion Lab. It sounds like the students are running the entire project under a NASA grant, as opposed to NASA or a faculty group running it.
They're actually talking about building a decent sized satellite that can simulate 0.38 G with life support systems capable of keeping 15 mice alive for 5 weeks and surviving re-entry. Fortunately, most of the labor will be free (yay student labor), so if this is successful, they'll have performed a very interesting new experiment for much less than NASA could have, and they'll have a great item on their resumes, too.
By the way, a 1 meter diameter capsule simulating 0.38 G at its outer radius must spin about 26 RPM. Thank goodness mice are small or Coriolis effect would be giving them a headache in the size capsule a school project could expect to afford. They can probably just arrange the entire wall as a floor, giving the mice room to move around comfortably while filling the center of the capsule with their cameras and life support gear.
As background, NASA is extremely interested in the effects of low gravity on health. Ironically, we know exactly what earth gravity does to a person over their life, and we have a really good idea what "zero" gravity does over extended periods, but we have basically no clue what intermediate levels do. For example, astronauts on board space stations for months at a time experience significant loss of bone mass to weightlessness. Does the rate of bone loss depend in a linear fashion on the magnitude of accelleration or is even a small level of gravity sufficient to prevent this loss?
- Did you ever notice that "Valentine's Day" and "venereal disease" both start with the same two letters?
- We're both white trash, bred by the dozen, and now its time to do my cousin!
- Roses are red, politicians are sleazy, will you be mine? I hear you're easy
- Roses are red, violets are blue, I've got herpes, and now so do you!
- As Elton John says on Valentine's Day "It's better to have a rose on your piano than a tulip on your organ!"
Libertas in infinitum