Tabula Rasa Promotion To Send Gamers' DNA to Space

Bridger tips news that NCSoft's Tabula Rasa, created in part by Richard Garriott, is running an unusual promotion right now. Garriott is going to the International Space Station on October 12th, and he'll take with him a digital record of the DNA of various players and celebrities. The basic plot of Tabula Rasa is that Earth was attacked and humans almost completely wiped out. Garriott's promotion is playing on that idea; the hard drive with the DNA data will be left in orbit "just in case" something happens to humanity on Earth. NCSoft has been running a variety of polls and contests to include further data about humans on the hard drive. The deadline for joining the project has recently been extended to September 29th.

Comments

Nuclear DNA is not enough

[Alain Williams]

Presumably they are sending digitised nuclear DNA into space. That is not enough to make a human body: you need the mitochondrial DNA and somewhere suitable to grow the embryo.

That might give you a body, but what you really want is the person: all the memes that s/he has would need to be recorded and suitably grafted in, even then what you get won't be much like the original.

OK: I'll admit that it is a fun idea, but that is about it.

Pessimistic?

[jheath314]

They must be anticipating the demise of the human race really soon. So far I've outlived every hard drive I've ever owned... and all of those weren't exposed to hard radiation.

On a more abstract level, I doubt you'd be able to reconstruct any living creature using its DNA only. From what I understand of biology (which is rather limited), the DNA itself only contains the blueprints for how to create proteins, but the how, when, and how much is controlled by RNA, which previously had been overlooked as "just a carrier molecule". To put it in computer terms, the DNA is the processor, while the RNA is the operating system. You'd have a tough time re-creating Linux/Windows/Mac OS X based solely on the circuit diagram of a processor.

Re:Silly

[david.given]

No, that's not what I meant --- a lion embryo will develop in a tiger womb, and vice versa. I'm not talking about the ability to cross-breed (although the reason why they're developmentally compatible is because, as you say, they're closely enough related that they can almost cross-breed).

The same applies to donkeys and horses.

space junk

[cliffski]

isn't there already a problem with too much crap from earlier missions in orbit? do we really need another chunk of metal whizzing around for the next million years?
Tragic PR stunts should stay out of space.