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Wikipedia May Get Delivered To The Moon (wikimedia.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the the-final-frontier dept.

A new Meta page on Wikimedia.org reports: "A group of science enthusiasts from Berlin, Germany, are planning to send their own custom-built rover to the Moon. And they want to take Wikipedia with them." Sort of. Wikimedia Deutschland has been offered space on a data disc to be carried by one of the five image-gathering rovers still competing to land on the Moon by 2017 for the Google Lunar XPRIZE challenge. But there's only 20 gigabytes of space, so they're calling on the Wikipedia communities to agree on which content should be included by June 24. "Even if only a snapshot of Wikipedia can be brought to the Moon, its content will equal a genuine snapshot of the sum of all human knowledge..." the Meta page explains "This is an anniversary gift to all Wikipedia communities all over the world."

36 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Vandals, go! by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

    Now is your chance to send your message to the moon.

  2. Bigelow Aerospace should be helping by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    Seriously, if I were Bigelow, I would be thinking in terms of what parts of the net are vittle and useful. Wikipedia actually IS both vittle and useful.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re: Bigelow Aerospace should be helping by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Mmm, vittles.

  3. Re:most depressing thing I've read so far today by Kjella · · Score: 2

    Or is it the most unintentionally hilarious thing I've read so far today? Sometimes the line is very blurred.

    I went with hilarious. Boy you need a lot of hubris to make that kind of statement, try making say a 14nm CPU or Boeing 747 from Wikipedia and see how far you get...

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. How about a new Rosetta Stone by Woldscum · · Score: 2

    I'm thinking a Humankind Rosetta stone. All known past and present writing systems spelling out the same message. Same with mathematical systems.

    1. Re: How about a new Rosetta Stone by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Sure, with seven sides: English, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Arabic and Twitter.

    2. Re: How about a new Rosetta Stone by Woldscum · · Score: 1

      I'm talking about every system mankind knows. Like Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, Greek, Cuneiform, Nordic runes, Arabic, etc and each language that uses each system. Greek, Roman, Indian, etc. number systems.

    3. Re: How about a new Rosetta Stone by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Clearly, it must have an eighth side where the joke is explained.

    4. Re: How about a new Rosetta Stone by _merlin · · Score: 1

      That's not completely true - Mandarin Chinese has stricter grammar than Cantonese. There are different conventions for how things are phrased. They're definitely mutually intelligible and very similar when written, but they end up sounding odd if you try to read one as the other.

  5. Okay... why? by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    Putting a plaque on the moon made sense. We needed to show we'd made it that far.

    Why do we need "the sum of human knowledge" up there, though? I mean, if aliens stop by to have a look when we're not around, they're probably not going to look at the moon first. It's orbiting something much more interesting.

    1. Re: Okay... why? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Let's see: no plate tectonics, no volcanic activity, no erosion (at least none due to wind and rain), no atmosphere to oxidize materials, no storms, no flooding, no forest fires, no chaos (except deadly charged particles) and no conflict... at least not until seventy-five years after she's been colonized. :)

    2. Re: Okay... why? by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

      Anything which would leave us in need of a backup that secure would also make said back up completely inaccessible.

    3. Re: Okay... why? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      leave us

      Would this be for us?

  6. 20GB ? by brunes69 · · Score: 1

    Why is there only 20GB of space?

    1. Re:20GB ? by cstdenis · · Score: 1

      Because they need the rest for the actual mission?

      --
      1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
    2. Re:20GB ? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      only? you have no idea how much data that is, do you? the 32 volume Encyclopedia Britannica weighed 129 lbs, but fits on a 4.7GB DVD with room left over for the student and elementary versions of the encyclopedia, four dictionaries, thesaurus, world atlas, classic literature collection...etc and etc The text for the set is less than 1GB

    3. Re:20GB ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      According to NASA, it costs $10,000 to get 1 lb into space.

      http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/astp.html_prt.htm

      A microSD card weighs 0.5 grams. 10000/454 is about $20 per gram, so it costs ten bucks to get that microSD card up there. A $50 card can easily hold 128GB. So yes - why is there only 20GB?

    4. Re:20GB ? by Rei · · Score: 1

      You're not going to launch a microSD card if you want something to last for millenia. You're going to launch something like M-DISC. Which from the links is what it sounds like they're launching.

      Furthermore, we're not talking about getting something into "space", or even LEO (FYI typical costs are $10k/kg to LEO, not per pound, although Russian/Chinese launchers and SpaceX are cheaper). We're talking about to the lunar surface. That's significantly more delta-V. The disc is about 16 grams. Cost to lunar surface would optimistically be ballpark $30k/kg. So about $500USD. Given that this is a volunteer team competing for a prize, it's not insignificant.

      --
      "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
    5. Re:20GB ? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      its a self serving wank project anyway so who cares how long it lasts

    6. Re:20GB ? by Dominare · · Score: 1

      Adapters? To what standard? Are you, for example, reasonably certain that whoever digs it up from the moon rock millenia from now will have access to a USB port?

  7. Re:"Locked" pages by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    no, some pages are locked just because people who have the actual facts keep changing them away from what the ignorant community wants. many topics don't have wikipedia articles because young people think all human knowledge is on the internet, so if a topic doesn't appear in a google search it must not exist nor need encyclopedia article.

  8. Great idea! by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

    Now if humanity destroys itself, aliens can find out about our civilization preserved on whatever format that won't have bit rot. They're preserving it in a format without bit rot, right?

    --
    God spoke to me
    1. Re:Great idea! by peragrin · · Score: 1

      Yes and no. They are taking bit rot and modification into account. They will slam 20 gigabytes of rockets(one per bit) into the surface of the moon. The moon itself will store the data. Reading might appear to be tricky but some good cameras, and a sensible starting location (clockwise starting at Apollo 11) would work.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  9. I nominate this article... by Catmeat · · Score: 3, Funny

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories

  10. Moon Demons Can't Read. by zenlessyank · · Score: 1

    It needs to be an audio book.

    1. Re:Moon Demons Can't Read. by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      In lunar space, nobody can hear you read a book.

  11. Re:What about that crystal disk from some time ago by Rei · · Score: 1

    I don't know what "crystal disc" you're talking about, but it sounds like they're using M-DISC. It's basically engraved into a ceramic layer.

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  12. Future News by Rei · · Score: 2, Funny

    "And in Future News, in response to the hack of Wikipedia's servers and the discovery that their offsite backup service was a scam, the Wikimedia foundation has launched the new Wikimedia Lunar X-Prize, for the first team who can travel to the moon, retrieve a data disc and return it safely to Earth...."

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  13. Select randomly by mbone · · Score: 1

    If it was up to me, I would select a handful or articles to describe what was being done (i.e., one on wikipedia, one on the Moon, one on the Lunar X prize, one on whatever Apollo mission they are going to land near, maybe one on Germany, no more than order 10 at all) and then select items randomly until the 20 GB was used up.

    We seriously don't know what the "audience" would want to read about; doing it randomly would to some degree avoid the "they included all this junk no one cares about, and totally neglected X" problem with most historical summaries from, say, the classical era.

    1. Re:Select randomly by freedomlinux · · Score: 1

      Have you ever explored the Random Article button? It seems that Wikipedia is composed 5% of stub articles on UK rail stations, football clubs, and football players

  14. Re:What about that crystal disk from some time ago by Pax681 · · Score: 1

    http://www.dailytech.com/Scien...
    this stuff?

  15. Re:What about that crystal disk from some time ago by Pax681 · · Score: 1

    http://www.dailytech.com/Scien...

  16. deliver it to the moon by strstr · · Score: 1

    then they can see what retards the public knowledge base was made from. the whole thing is littered with censorship, propaganda and void of real science.

    trade secrets, classified information, and anything deemed 'self research' or 'fringe science' or 'unpopular' is removed. lol.

    obamasweapon.com drrobertduncan.com

    it's basically like a DARPA project to brainwash the masses and hide information from the general populous.

    1. Re:deliver it to the moon by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      Anything deemed 'self research' or 'fringe science' or 'unpopular' is removed. lol.

      Ok, crazy person, let me get this straight. Basic tenants of peer review and institutionally supported science are "lol", but a website that says;-

      "Who wants to be pulvarized, pressurized, raped, and hurt with electronic warfare/interferometry (projected radiation) without their consent, in total secrecy? It's happening to me right now. :)" is not "lol".

      Get some Thorazine dude, it helps.

      Is not s

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  17. Great just what we need a new bunch of Lunatics by TimSSG · · Score: 1

    Great just what we need a new bunch of Lunatics editing Wikipedia. For the grammar or humor impaired Luna means moon. Lunatics could then mean moon people. Tim S.

  18. The More Important Story by hundertwasser · · Score: 1

    Isn't the more important story that "A group of science enthusiasts from Berlin, Germany, are planning to send their own custom-built rover to the Moon?" Or, if they take wikipedia to the moon and no one is there to read it?